The Majority of Orthopaedic Surgery Residency Faculty in the United States are Allopathic Males

Abstract

Introduction There is a paucity of information regarding the demographic characteristics of faculty at Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) orthopaedic surgery residency programs. The purpose of this study was to determine the demographics and education training of all current orthopaedic surgery residency program faculty members. We hypothesized that there would be a sex discrepancy among orthopaedic surgery faculty, and that there would be fewer DO (Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine) than MD (Medical Doctor) orthopaedic surgeons in academic medicine. Methods The Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database was used to identify all orthopaedic surgery residency programs in the United States. The following information was collected from each program website: faculty sex, degree, academic role, administrative title, and subspecialty. Faculty roles, titles, and subspecialties were compared across type of institution, degree earned, and sex using Chi squared and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Results Of the 4,325 faculty members identified, 3,893 were male (90%) and 4,033 were MDs (93%). The most common subspecialty was sports medicine (789, 18%). While traditional ACGME programs still had more MD faculty (3,728, 97.5%) (p<0.001), the majority of faculty at traditional American Osteopathic Association (AOA) programs were also MDs (305, 61%). There were more male DOs than male MDs (95.6% vs. 89.3%, p<0.001). More DOs practiced general orthopaedics (14.8% vs. 4.1%), whereas more MDs practiced upper extremity and orthopaedic oncology (p<0.001). More male faculty practiced adult reconstruction (616, 15.8%), trauma (489, 12.6%), spine (471, 12.1%), and sports medicine (719, 18.5%), whereas more female faculty practiced pediatrics (135, 31.3%), upper extremity (100, 23.1%), and oncology (33, 7.6%). More male faculty held titles as chair of orthopaedic surgery (145, 3.7%) and fellowship director (111, 2.9%) than females (5, 1.2% and 5, 1.2%). Males were also listed as assistant professor (1057, 27.2% vs 188, 43.5%), associate professor (636, 16.3% vs 86, 19.9%), and professor (618, 15.9% vs 41, 9.5%) more commonly than females. Conclusion The current faculty of orthopaedic surgery residency programs is heavily male dominated, holding higher academic roles and administrative titles than women. There is also a high prevalence of MDs with higher academic roles and administrative titles than DOs.