Academic career outcomes of Orthopedic Research and Education Foundation resident grant recipients

• Published in: Journal of orthopaedic research 2023-02, Vol.41 (2), p.459-465
• Main Authors: Silvestre, Jason, Burgess, Regan K., Nelson, Charles L., Thompson, Terry L.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: academic; Biomedical Research; Career Choice; Female; Financing, Organized; Humans; Male; National Institutes of Health (U.S.); OREF; orthopedics; residency; Retrospective Studies; surgery; United States
• ISSN: 0736-0266; 1554-527X
• DOI: 10.1002/jor.25383

The Orthopedic Research and Education Foundation (OREF) awards resident research grants to orthopedic surgery residents. Outcomes are lacking for OREF resident grant recipients including academic career choice and scholarly productivity. This was a retrospective cohort study of OREF resident grant recipients (2012–2020). The percentage of OREF resident grant recipients selecting an academic career was compared with the percentage of academic orthopedic surgeons in the United States via a χ2 test. Two hundred and seventy‐six OREF resident grants were issued to 272 orthopedic surgery residents at 73 programs. OREF resident grant recipients were predominantly male (79.0%) and Caucasian (70.2%). OREF resident grant recipients had greater women representation than the national cohort of orthopedic surgery residents (21.0% vs. 16.0%, p = 0.030) with similar proportions of underrepresented racial minorities (29.8% vs. 27.2%, p = 0.351). OREF resident grants consisted of clinical (69.6%) and basic/translational science (30.4%) research and were awarded mostly for sports medicine (25.4%), trauma (18.8%), and adult reconstruction (15.9%) topics. The average h‐index was 8.5 ± 9.2 resulting from 29.5 ± 51.2 manuscripts. The majority of OREF resident grant recipients selected an academic career, which was higher than the national benchmark of academic orthopedic surgeons (63.8% vs. 24.4%, p