Abstract
Purpose :
There remains a dearth of literature on sex and racial/ethnic diversity trends among ophthalmology fellowship applicants. Our study purpose was to investigate the proportion of female and under-represented minorities (URMs) among ophthalmology fellowship match applicants.
Methods :
De-identifed San Francisco (SF) matching data for ophthalmology fellowship applicants in the U.S. for 2019 and 2010 was analyzed.
Results :
Between 2019 and 2020, there were a total 698 ophthalmology fellowship applicants. Of these, 283 (40.5%) were males, 200 (28.7%) females and 215 (30.8%) did not disclose their gender. In terms of race/ethnicity, only 51 (7.7%) identified as URMs, and 213 (32.1%) did not disclose their race. There were significant differences in the mean number of distributions and mean number of interviews completed between URMs and non-URMs (<0.001). The proportion of matched male and female applicants among cornea, glaucoma, retina, and pediatric ophthalmology was: 34.9% vs 30.1%, 43.7% vs 29.1%, 47.2% vs 19.9% and 32.5% and 47%. Among males, the most popular subspecialties were: retina (41%), glaucoma (24.4%), cornea (20.5%) and pediatric ophthalmology (9.5%). Among females, the most popular subspecialities were: cornea (25%), retina (24.5%), glaucoma (23%) and pediatric ophthalmology (19.5%). There was no association between sex and race/ethnicity and match outcomes.
Conclusions :
The percentage of URMs applying for fellowship in ophthalmology remains low, and the number of interviews they receive is significantly less than non-URMs. The percentage of females in all subspecialities of ophthalmology except pediatrics remains low. More efforts are needed to collect data on gender and race/ethnicity and improve representation in ophthalmology.
This abstract was presented at the 2022 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Denver, CO, May 1-4, 2022, and virtually.