Reply to the Letter to the Editor: How Long Will It Take to Reach Gender Parity in Orthopaedic Surgery in the United States? An Analysis of the National Provider Identifier Registry

Acuña, Alexander J.; Sato, Eleanor H.; Kamath, Atul F.; Samuel, Linsen T.; Jeong, Stacy; Chen, Antonia F.; Kamath, Atul F.

doi:10.1097/corr.0000000000001999

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Further studies are needed to validate these findings. A prior study estimated that it would take 217 years to achieve gender parity among practicing physicians 25 . The difference in time lag between these studies is attributable to several factors.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several studies have investigated possible solutions to gender disparity in orthopaedic surgery in addition to ongoing research assessing our annual progress 16 - 24 . Acuna et al evaluated the time it would take for the representation of women orthopaedic surgeons to match the proportion of all women physicians and found that it would take 217 years (or by 2,236) to reach gender parity with the overall medical profession, assuming a constant national growth rate of 2% per year from 2019 25 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Exponential Growth in Female Residency Applicants in Orthopaedic Surgery Over the Past 15 Years

et al. 2023

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Introduction: Orthopaedic surgery is recognized as one of the most popular but least diverse medical subspecialties.Although significant efforts have been made in recent years to improve gender diversity, orthopaedic surgery continues to lag behind other surgical subspecialties. A recent study predicted that it would take 217 years for orthopaedic surgery to reach gender parity matching the 36.3% of practicing female physicians in the United States. The purpose of our study was to evaluate the annual percentages of female medical student applicants in orthopaedic surgery over the past 15 years and to determine when this gender parity percentage may be reached among residency applicants. Methods: The Electronic Residency Application Service was queried for orthopaedic residency applicant data from 2007 to 2022. The annual percentage of female applicants as well as the annual change in percentage of female applicants was recorded. A best-fit trendline was calculated and extrapolated to predict future rates of female applicants. Results: The percent of female applicants has increased from 11.8% in 2007 to 23.0% in 2022. Between 2007 and 2022, there were 9 years with annual increases in percentage of females applying into orthopaedic surgery with a statistically significant increase in 4 of those years (2008, 2014, 2019, and 2022). There were 6 years with annual decreases in percentage of females applying to orthopaedic surgery, none of which were statistically significant. The best-fit curve is exponential with a correlation coefficient of 0.8 (p < 0.001). This predicts reaching the predetermined gender parity percentage of 36.3% in 16 years. Conclusion: In the past 15 years, there has been a near-doubling in the percentage of female medical students applying to orthopaedic surgery residency. Although orthopaedic surgery remains the least gender-diverse field of medicine, these trends are encouraging and support the initiatives currently in place including early education and increased mentorship to help close the gender gap in orthopaedic surgery.Disclosure: The Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest forms are provided with the online version of the article (http://links.lww.com/JBJSOA/A516).

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%