Residency Selection Preferences and Orthopaedic Career Perceptions: A Notable Mismatch

Despite near-equal enrollment of males and females in medical schools, orthopaedic surgery continues to have one of the lowest percentage of female orthopaedic residents. This suggests there may be factors that specifically influence females to select other specialties. Some of these possible reason...

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Veröffentlicht in:Clinical orthopaedics and related research 2020-07, Vol.478 (7), p.1515-1525
Hauptverfasser: Whitaker, John, Hartley, Brandi, Zamora, Rodolfo, Duvall, Destiny, Wolf, Valeri
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:Despite near-equal enrollment of males and females in medical schools, orthopaedic surgery continues to have one of the lowest percentage of female orthopaedic residents. This suggests there may be factors that specifically influence females to select other specialties. Some of these possible reasons have been explored in other studies; however, in this study, we sought to identify latent or unobserved variables that may be influencing this difference by conducting an explanatory factor analysis of male and female residency preferences. In this study, by surveying a cohort of medical students at a single institution, we asked, is there a difference between males and females (1) in their perception of orthopaedic surgery and (2) in their preferences for residency and practice? We further asked, if there are differences, (3) is there a correlation between perception and preferences for residency and practice? A 46-question survey was sent to all current medical students (n = 628) at a major urban university with near-equal enrollment of males (55%, 345 of 628) and females (45%, 283 of 628) from September 2017 to November 2017. The survey consisted of two main parts: (1) desired attributes of a residency program and (2) perceptions of orthopaedic residency and practice. The design of the survey instruments closely followed The Checklist for Reporting Results of Internet E-Surveys (CHERRIES) checklist and went through several variations and pilot studies before release. In all, 33% (205 of 628) total medical students responded to the email survey, 55% (112 of 205) were male and 45% (93 of 205) were female. The proportion of male and female respondents matched the gender distribution of the total population surveyed, which at the time of the survey was 55% male and 45% female.The data analysis was performed using a Mann-Whitney U test and an explanatory factor analysis. The explanatory factor analysis was used to identify the correlation between survey variables among male and female students. An alpha less than 0.05 was considered significant for the Mann-Whitney U test and a factor greater than 0.5 was considered significant for the factor analysis. Both male and female students ranked "work-life balance" and "variety in specialty" among the top three most important preferences. Females ranked "range of practice options," higher than males (72% females versus 60% males, r = 0.18; p = 0.009), and males ranked "previous exposure to the specialty" higher than fe
ISSN:0009-921X
1528-1132
DOI:10.1097/CORR.0000000000001161