Residency Research Quality Outweighs Quantity in Predicting Sports Medicine Fellowship Placement

To determine whether academic productivity during residency correlates with the type of orthopaedic sports medicine fellowship program attended.

All orthopaedic sports medicine fellowship programs accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education were identified by cross-referencing databases from the Arthroscopy Association of North America and the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine. An initial database search was conducted in September of 2024. Fellow and faculty names were collected from program websites or requested via email. Programs that did not list fellow or faculty names and did not provide them upon request were excluded. The research team followed up on the request for information if response was not received after 2 weeks. All programs that were listed in all 3 of the referenced databases and had fellow/faculty information publicly available or provided upon request were included in the study. Publication data were obtained using Scopus. Fellow academic productivity was assessed by H-index and number of publications during residency. Faculty H-index scores were averaged to represent each program's academic productivity.

Fifty-seven programs met inclusion criteria. Programs were categorized as high or low academic productivity based on the median average faculty H-index, and the threshold was determined to be 16.5. High-academic-productivity programs (n = 29) had a median faculty H-index of 23.30 (mean: 27.46 ± 9.6), compared with 11.00 (mean: 10.89 ± 3.23) in low-productivity programs (n = 28). A statistically significant but weak correlation was found between faculty H-index and fellow H-index (P = .045; Spearman's rho = 0.266). A weaker, nonsignificant correlation was observed between faculty H-index and fellow publication count during residency (P = .075; Spearman's rho = 0.237). Subgroup analysis showed no significant differences in fellow H-index or residency publication count between high- and low-productivity programs (P = .060 and P = .090, respectively).

Fellows in more academically productive fellowship programs show slightly higher H-indices overall, yet the correlation is weak and productivity alone does not predict the type of fellowship program attended.

These findings offer insight into how research productivity during residency may play a role in determining the level of academic productivity of sports medicine fellowship programs and where residents match.