Discrepancies in Publication Volume Per Matched-Applicant Between Sex, Geographic Regions and Program Affiliation in the 2023 Orthopaedic Surgery Residency Match

Objective: This study aims to examine potential gender-based publication disparities among 2023 orthopaedic surgery matched-applicants, investigate variations in research emphasis based on program affiliation and assess publication differences across different geographic regions. Methods: Orthopaedic surgery residency programs participating in the 2023 NRMP with a publicly available incoming resident class were identified using the NRMP database. Each resident was searched using PubMed and ORCID identifiers for publications. Each program was designated as “university-based”, “community-based”, “community-based/university affiliated” or “other” using the American Medical Association’s FRIEDA database. Results: In total, 763 residents were identified with a mean and median number of publications of 6.1 (SD=10.0) and 3.0 (IQR=1.0-7.0) respectively. There was no significant difference in the median number of publications between males (2.0) and females (3.0, p=0.2315). Those who matched to “community-based/university affiliated” (median=2.0) programs had a lower median number of publications than those who matched to “university-based” (median=3.0, p<0.0001) or “other” (median=6.0, p=0.0006). Geographically, applicants in the West-South Central region (median=1.0) had the lowest publication median compared to those in the New England (median=4.0, p=0.0010) or Pacific (median=4.0, p=0.0015) regions. Conclusion: There lies a perceived increase in significance of research publications for competitiveness in the orthopaedic surgery match. This largely follows the elimination of objective Step-1 scoring to help stratify potential applicants. Research remains an objective manner to stratify applicants; however, new data lacks on recent analysis of the 2023 match pool. There was not a significant difference in the number of publications between male vs female matched-applicants. The program category “other” and the New England and Pacific regions had the highest median number of publications.