No abstract

Level II, prognostic study. See Guidelines for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.

Background: Orthopaedic surgery has generally lagged behind other surgical subspecialties with respect to racial and ethnic diversity in its U.S. residency programs. Efforts have been made to increase the number of underrepresented minorities (URMs) applying to orthopaedic surgery residencies; however, the impact on diversity at the residency program level is unknown. The purpose of this study was to determine whether orthopaedic surgery residency programs have become more racially diverse over time. Methods: The Graduate Medical Education Track database was queried for individual racial/ethnic identification of orthopaedic surgery residents in U.S. Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)-accredited programs for 15 consecutive years (2002-2003 through 2016-2017). The number of URMs in each residency program during each academic year was recorded. The number of programs per year with no URMs, 1 URM, 2 URMs, and >2 URMs was recorded, and the change over time was assessed. Results: The number of programs per year with >1 URM resident decreased over time, from 61 programs in 2002 to 53 programs in 2016, with the trough being 31 programs in 2010 (p < 0.0001). The number of programs per year without any URM residents increased over the period of study, from 40 programs in 2002 to 60 programs in 2016, with the peak being 76 programs in 2011 (p < 0.0001). Conclusions: The number of residency programs with >1 URM resident has decreased significantly over time, suggesting that diversity at the program level is limited. Program-level diversity should be further examined as a potential barrier to the recruitment of URMs to orthopaedics. Difficulty attracting URM residents to certain programs may have the unintended consequence of effectively limiting potential positions for these candidates, which can decrease the odds of minority students matching into orthopaedics and, therefore, perpetuate the cycle of lack of diversity in our field. Orthopaedic surgery in the United States lags behind other specialties with respect to racial and ethnic diversity among both residents and academic faculty 1-3. Minorities have been underrepresented in orthopaedics relative to the number of medical students who are underrepresented minorities (URMs) 1,4. In 2006, African Americans and Hispanics/Latinos represented 13.8% of medical school graduates but only 7.8% of orthopaedic surgery residents and 4.9% of orthopaedic surgery faculty 1. Previously, it has been demonstrated that the proportion of minority residents in orthopaedics did not significantly increase over time, with African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans constituting 8.8% of orthopaedic residents in 1995 and 9.1% of residents in 2010 2. Disclosure: The authors indicated that no external funding was received for any aspect of this work. On the Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest forms, which are provided with the online version of the article, one or more of the authors checked "yes" to indicate that the author had a relevant financial relat...

No abstract

The lack of sex and racial diversity of the physicians within the specialty of orthopaedic surgery was recognized decades ago, and formal steps to address these issues began in 1983 with the founding of the Ruth Jackson Orthopaedic Society and the J. Robert Gladden Orthopaedic Society. Despite the efforts of these organizations, the work of other interested groups, and the growing diversity in medical student demographics, physician diversity in orthopaedic surgery remains disproportionately poor relative to the populations that we serve as a specialty.