Analysis of Demographic and Educational Backgrounds of Interventional Neuroradiology Fellowship Program Director Workforce in North America

Abstract

Purpose: To analyse the demographics, academic background, and scholarly activity of Interventional Neuroradiology (INR)/Endovascular Surgical Neuroradiology (ESN) program directors (PDs) in the United States (US) and Canada.

Methods: A list of all INR/ESN fellowships was obtained from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, the Committee on Advanced Subspecialty Training, maintained by Society of Neurological Surgeons, the NeuroInterventional Training list website maintained by the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery, and the Neurosurgical Fellowship Training Program Directory website maintained by the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. Online search was performed to identify PDs for these programs. Publicly available sources used to gather information about each PD included the program websites, the HealthGrades and Doximity websites, and Elsevier's Scopus database. Demographic and educational data including age, gender, educational background, subspecialty, appointment age, interval between residency completion and appointment as PD, additional degrees, academic rank, prior leadership positions, and metrics of scholarly activity were recorded. One-way analysis of variance was used to determine differences between the means of different groups.

Results: A total of 78 PDs from 72 programs were included, of which 72 (92.3%) were male with the mean age of 49.59 years (SD 7.25). Specialty division of PDs was neurosurgery (40, 51.3%), radiology (26, 33.3%), and neurology (10, 12.8%), whereas 2 PDs were dual board-certified in neurology and radiology. Twenty-five (32.1%) PDs attended an international medical school. All PDs received an MD degree or foreign equivalent, with no PD holding a DO degree. Eleven PDs received a PhD degree and 16 PDs received fellowship from a professional medical society. The mean ± SD publications, citations, and h-indexes of PDs were 111.32 ± 121.18, 2985.0 ± 1459.0 and 22.27 ± 15.45, respectively. There was no statistical difference in scholarly activity among PDs when stratified on the basis of specialty, gender, and US region.

Conclusion: INR/ESN PDs are predominantly male, with a majority from neurosurgery background, and thirty percent having graduated from international medical schools.