Female Orthopaedic Surgeons Are Less Represented as Head Team Physicians in Collegiate Athletic Programs

To evaluate National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) head team physicians (HTPs), focusing on gender as it relates to divisional variability, medical specialty, and research productivity.

In December 2022, the NCAA member directory was utilized to obtain HTP information from the top 5 conferences within Divisions I, II, and III (DI, DII, and DIII, respectively). Division I schools were selected from the previously established "Power 5" conferences. Divisions II and III used NCAA rankings. HTP data were collected from publicly available verifiable data sources. Data for gender, Scopus H-index, residency programs, and fellowship programs were collected. Mean, median, skewness, P values, and odds ratios were calculated for analysis.

In total, 186 NCAA institutions were evaluated: 69 DI (37%), 65 DII (35%), and 52 DIII (28%). DIII had the highest female representation (8; 16%). Out of the 67 orthopaedic surgery HTPs, 5 (7.5%) were female and 62 male (92.5%). There is a statistically significant difference in female orthopaedic surgeon representation in the HTP field compared to males (P = .038, α = 0.05). Female orthopaedic surgeons have 38% lower odds of being represented as HTPs compared to males (P = .046, α = 0.05). Female HTPs in Divisions I and III had higher H-indexes than the overall average and median values for their respective divisions.

Female HTPs are significantly less represented compared to males in the NCAA. Furthermore, female orthopaedic surgeons had lower odds of being represented as HTPs compared to their male counterparts. For research productivity, female HTPs impacted the distribution as outliers in Divisions I and III.

Level IV, cross-sectional study.