How Competitive are Integrated Vascular Surgery Residency Programs? A Ten-Year Comparison Using a Normalized...

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Surgical Training
• Residency Matching

Background:

• Integrated vascular surgery (VS) residency programs offer an accelerated alternative to traditional fellowship pathways.
• The popularity of VS programs has grown, necessitating better tools for assessing program competitiveness.
• Comparing VS programs to general surgery (GS) programs requires a standardized metric.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a simple metric for medical students to evaluate the competitiveness of VS residency programs.
• To compare the competitiveness of VS programs against GS programs using National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) data.

Main Methods:

• Analyzed NRMP match data (2012-2021) and applicant metrics (2015-2019) from the Association of American Medical Colleges.
• Created a competitive index (CI) by dividing the number of programs ranked per applicant by the match rate.
• Normalized the CI (NCI) for longitudinal comparisons and performed linear regression to assess trends.

Main Results:

• Both GS and VS programs had a similar match rate of 52%.
• The CI was significantly higher for VS programs (18.4 ± 3.0) compared to GS programs (14.5 ± 0.4).
• VS programs showed increasing NCI and number of programs ranked per applicant over time (R² > 0.61).

Conclusions:

• Matching into VS programs is becoming increasingly competitive.
• The average CI for VS programs was approximately 27% higher than for GS programs.
• The normalized competitive index (NCI) may serve as a valuable metric for applicants evaluating VS programs.