Cataloging formal medical student surgical funding opportunities: A retrospective characterization

Andrew Wang; Keshav Goel; Nathan A Shlobin; Timothy Liu; Mandy Liou; Jasmine A Thum; Oscar J Hines; Langston T Holly

doi:10.1016/j.sopen.2023.10.013

Cataloging formal medical student surgical funding opportunities: A retrospective characterization

Surg Open Sci. 2023 Oct 31:16:244-247. doi: 10.1016/j.sopen.2023.10.013. eCollection 2023 Dec.

Authors

Andrew Wang^{1

2}, Keshav Goel¹, Nathan A Shlobin³, Timothy Liu^{1

4}, Mandy Liou⁵, Jasmine A Thum^{1

6}, Oscar J Hines^{1

7}, Langston T Holly^{1

6}

Affiliations

¹ David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States of America.
² College of Medicine, Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States of America.
³ Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States of America.
⁴ Department of Orthopedic Surgery, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States of America.
⁵ College of Optometry, Marshall B. Ketchum University, Fullerton, CA, United States of America.
⁶ Department of Neurosurgery, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States of America.
⁷ Department of General Surgery, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States of America.

Abstract

Representation of female surgical residents has slowly increased, but underrepresented in medicine (URiM) representation remains disappointingly low. National residency matching reports suggest that meaningful research experience improves surgical residency match success - therefore, formal funding opportunities and early mentorship for URiM medical students. In this study, we catalog medical student (MS) funding opportunities (funding type, eligibility by year, mission, compensation, length of commitment, number of awardees, and dollar investment amount per student) from 7 surgical departments (general surgery, thoracic surgery, vascular surgery, plastic surgery, otorhinolaryngology, orthopedic surgery, neurosurgery) within 196 US medical schools and 20 professional surgical educational organizations through manually searching web pages. We recorded 146 surgical funding opportunities from medical school surgical departments and 16 surgical funding opportunities from professional organizations. Overall, we find that medical institutions' surgical departments and professional surgical educational organizations may not be effectively utilizing recruitment strategies in MS funding opportunities.

Keywords: Cultural diversity; Funding; Medical students; Research; Residency and internship; Surgery subspecialities.