Research productivity of international medical graduate (IMG) hematology and oncology fellows in the United States (US).

Abstract

9003 Background: IMGs constitute one-third of practicing oncologists in the US. However, there is limited data on their academic contributions. We analyzed the research productivity of IMG hematology-oncology fellows in US fellowship programs. Methods: Hematology-oncology fellows enrolled in an ACGME accredited training program as of June 2024, were identified from publicly available institutional fellowship program websites. Baseline characteristics (presumed gender, institution, additional graduate degrees [AD]) and academic profiles were abstracted. Research productivity data, including number of PubMed-listed manuscripts, original articles, review articles, first-author and senior-author manuscripts, google scholar (GS)-listed abstracts/articles, high-impact (impact factor ≥ 10) articles, citations, H-index, I-10 index were obtained from PubMed and GS. Fellows were categorized as IMGs or AMGs, based on whether they completed medical school outside or within the US, respectively. Chi-squared and Wilcoxon rank-sum/T-tests were used for categorical and numeric variables, respectively. Linear regression identified factors associated with higher research productivity. Results: Out of the total 1,858 fellows included, 42.3% were female, and 11% held ADs (e.g. master’s, PhD). Among all fellows, 30.5% were identified as IMGs. AMGs were more likely than IMGs to hold ADs (12% vs. 8.3%, p=0.019) and PhDs (8.9% vs. 3.4%, p<0.001). However, IMG fellows exhibited significantly higher research productivity, including more manuscripts (mean, 95% CI: 14.9 [12.6, 17.3] vs. 9.5 [8.6, 10.4]), abstracts (14.9 [9.2, 20.6] vs. 7.3 [3.5, 10.9]), review articles (4.9 [3.9, 6.0] vs. 2.4 [2.2, 2.7]), first-author manuscripts (4.3 [3.6, 5.0] vs. 2.7 [2.5, 2.8]), compared to AMGs (all p<0.001), Table 1. IMGs had an estimated 5.7 more manuscripts on average than AMGs after adjusting for gender and ADs (p<0.001); this difference varied by gender (8.7 higher in males, p<0.001, and 2.0 higher in females, p=0.2). Conclusions: IMG hematology-oncology fellows exhibit higher research productivity than their AMG counterparts, despite having fewer additional degrees. Our results highlight the substantial contributions of IMG fellows, underscore their critical role in academic medicine, and emphasize the importance of addressing potential structural barriers to practice at academic medical centers upon graduation. Research profile of IMG/AMG hematology-oncology fellows. Research productivity (median, IQR) IMG (N= 566) AMG (N= 1292) p-value PubMed manuscripts 7.5 (3, 16) 6 (2, 11) <0.001 GS articles 14 (6, 33) 9 (3, 18) <0.001 Abstracts 3 (1, 13) 2 (0, 6) <0.001 Original articles 4 (1, 11) 3 (1, 8) <0.001 Review articles 2 (0, 5) 1 (0, 3) <0.001 First-author manuscripts 2 (0, 5) 2 (0, 4) <0.001 Citations 116 (28, 310) 80 (12, 346) 0.07 H-index 5 (2, 8) 4 (0, 8) 0.003 I-10 index 3 (1, 9) 2 (0, 12) 0.28