Gender and Research Productivity of Vitreoretinal Surgery Fellowship Program Directors

Characteristics of vitreoretinal surgery fellowship program directors (PDs) in North America are not well described. This study reports on the gender and research productivity of vitreoretinal surgery PDs in the United States and Canada.

We reviewed demographics, total number of Scopus-indexed publications, h-index, and m-quotient for vitreoretinal surgery fellowship PDs in 2022. Descriptive statistics, student t-tests, χ² tests, and logistic regression analyses were performed.

Information was obtained on 83/89 (93%) PDs; 86% were male, and 84% did not have an additional graduate degree. The mean publication count was 81.54 (SD: 90.33) and mean h-index was 20.61 (SD: 16.49). There were no significant differences between female and male fellowship PDs with respect to number of publications, h-indices, and m-quotients.

Women were underrepresented among vitreoretinal fellowship PDs although they had similar research productivity as their male colleagues. [.