Impact of fellowship training on research productivity in academic ophthalmology.

Objectives To assess whether scholarly impact of academic ophthalmologists, as measured using the h-index , is affected by fellowship training status and to further characterize differences in productivity among the various subspecialties and by departmental rank. Design A descriptive and correlational design was used. In total, 1440 academic ophthalmologists from 99 ophthalmology training programs were analyzed. The h-index data were obtained from the Scopus database. Faculty members were classified by academic rank and grouped into 10 categories based on fellowship training: anterior segment, corneal and external disease, glaucoma, uveitis and ocular immunology, vitreoretinal disease, ophthalmic plastic surgery, pediatric ophthalmology, neuro-ophthalmology, ophthalmic pathology, and “other.” A one-way analysis of variance or Student t test using Microsoft Excel and “R” statistical software were used for comparison of continuous variables, with significance set at p Settings Faculty working in academic ophthalmology residency training programs in the United States whose information is stored in the American Medical Association’s Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database. Results Fellowship-trained ophthalmologists had significantly higher research productivity, as measured using the h-index , than non–fellowship-trained ophthalmologists in this study (p Conclusion Academic ophthalmologists with fellowship training have significantly higher scholarly output than non–fellowship-trained ophthalmologists do, as measured using the h-index . Research productivity increases with departmental academic rank from Assistant Professor to Professor.