Abstract
Purpose :
Ophthalmology residency selection continues to be a competitive process. It is widely understood that international medical graduates (IMGs) have an even more difficult match process. IMGs applying to ophthalmology often complete several years of post-doctoral research fellowships to build their research profiles while working with US-based mentors who may provide insight into their character and work ethic through letter of recommendations, a crucial aspect of the ophthalmology residency application process.
The data is sparse and outdated regarding information on IMGs matching and, to our knowledge, no published data exists for pinpointing research fellowships that may result in successful matches.
Methods :
Data was queried from the anonymous, publicly available, crowd-sourced OphthoMatch 2021-2021 and 2022-2023 spreadsheets. We searched and collected various characteristics of matched IMG individuals, including programs they matched to and country/medical school of origin.
A bibliometric search on PubMed was conducted to gather matched IMG author affiliations as well as total number of PubMed-indexed articles for each applicant by January 1st of the year they matched (I.e. our cutoff for an applicant who applied during the 2022-2023 cycle was January 1st, 2023). Author affiliations were used as a marker of possible post-doctoral research fellowships that applicants completed.
Results :
11 and 12 IMG candidates were reported to match during the 2022 and 2023 match cycles per OphthoMatch spreadsheet, respectively. The most represented countries of origin of matched IMGs included: Iran (6), India (4), Lebanon (3), Venezuela (3).
The most commonly presumed research fellowship institutions represented were Massachusetts Eye and Ear (3), Bascom Palmer (2), Wills Eye Hospital (2), Duke (2), New York Eye and Ear (2) and UCSD (2). Of the 23 total matched IMGs, 4 matched to the institution of their presumed research fellowship.
The average number of PubMed indexed articles of all applicants by January 1st of their match year was 19.1.
Conclusions :
This study provides some introductory and much-needed data for IMGs applying to ophthalmology, including possible top research fellowships to consider as well as an average number of publications of matched candidates. Data collection continues to provide a greater, more accurate representation of a successful IMG applicant.
This abstract was presented at the 2024 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, WA, May 5-9, 2024.