What Proportion of Women Who Received Funding to Attend a Ruth Jackson Orthopaedic Society Meeting Pursued a Career in Orthopaedics?

BACKGROUND: Orthopaedic surgery has the lowest percentage of women residents and faculty of any medical and surgical specialty. Diversity in medicine has been shown to improve patient outcomes and satisfaction. Although some scholarships are designed to increase the exposure of women medical students to orthopaedic surgery, the impact of those scholarships is largely unknown. QUESTIONS/PURPOSES: To determine the proportion of medical students who received a scholarship to attend the Ruth Jackson Orthopaedic Society (RJOS) annual meeting and later pursued a career in orthopaedic surgery.
METHODS: The RJOS scholarship was advertised through the RJOS website, current members, and newsletters. Any RJOS medical student member in good standing was eligible to receive the award. Eighty-one scholarship winners were selected from 2003 to 2016. From 2003 to 2010, there were two awards each year. Starting in 2011, 10 students were selected yearly, and these numbers increased annually secondary to increased industry financial support. Recipients received a check for USD 1500 and were able to attend both the RJOS and American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons annual meetings. We collected the names of all RJOS medical student scholarship winners from 2003 to 2016, and one author performed an internet search to determine whether these individuals are currently in an orthopaedic residency program or are orthopaedic surgeons. Secondary confirmation was performed to ensure accuracy by the RJOS administrative staff and the other two authors, independently, after the initial results were tabulated.
RESULTS: Of the 81 scholarship winners, 65 women (80%) now either practice orthopaedic surgery or are in an orthopaedic surgery residency program. Of the applicants who were not selected as scholarship recipients from 2014-2016, 44.9% went on to pursue a career in orthopaedics.
CONCLUSIONS: The RJOS scholarship may have helped young women decide to pursue careers in orthopaedic surgery, although it is also possible that some scholarship winners were inclined to do so before receiving the funding. Based partly on these results, the RJOS continues to award this scholarship. Future studies evaluating the impact of such scholarships and comparing them with alternative recruitment methods such as summer camps might be useful in determining the most effective way of increasing minority representation in orthopaedics, a factor that has been shown to be clinically relevant and one that can contribute to patient satisfaction. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level IV, therapeutic study.