The Impact of COVID-19 on Plastic Surgery Home Program Match Rates.

BACKGROUND: Historically, integrated plastic surgery is one of the most competitive specialties in the residency match. In the 2020-2021 residency application cycle, plastic surgery programs were forced to adjust how they select applicants because of the COVID-19 pandemic disrupting visiting subinternships. We hypothesize that a higher proportion of plastic surgery applicants matched at their home institution during the 2020-2021 application cycle secondary to the implementation of COVID-19-related restrictions. METHODS: Between March 24 and 27, 2021, we used publicly available, online plastic surgery-specific spreadsheets to analyze plastic surgery applicant information over the course of 3 application cycles (2018-2019, 2019-2020, and 2020-2021) for the top 50 plastic surgery programs. We collected data corresponding to the matched plastic surgery applicants' medical school, the institution at which they matched, and whether they had previous communication with their matched program. RESULTS: Our search yielded information on 128 applicants from the 2019 match cycle, 129 applicants from the 2020 match cycle, and 133 applicants from the 2021 application cycle. In 2019 and 2020, 15 (11.7%) and 22 (17.1%) plastic surgery applicants matched at their home program, respectively. In 2021, 32 (24.1%) of plastic surgery applicants matched at their home program (P = 0.032). When stratified by reputation rank, home program match rates among programs ranked 1-25 in 2021 had a large increase over the 2020 match cycle (28.4% vs 16.7%), whereas the home match rates of programs ranked 26-50 in 2021 (17.3%) held level with that of 2020 (17.6%). Conversely, for those not matched to their home programs, only 20 (19.8%) in 2021 reported having had any prior contact with their matched programs compared with 54 (50.5%) in 2020 (P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The 2020-2021 plastic surgery application cycle matched a significantly higher proportion of applicants at their home institution. With the temporary discontinuation of visiting subinternships during the 2020-2021 application cycle, it is likely that both plastic surgery programs and applicants compensate for this loss of in-person exposure by turning to home applicants and home institutions, respectively.

Disparate Responses in Match Outcome across Competitive Surgical Subspecialties to Pandemic Era Constraints: An Analysis of Impacts of Minimal Auditions.

OBJECTIVE: The Covid-19 pandemic eliminated nearly all visiting sub-internships. We seek to uncover match rate disparities across plastic surgery, otolaryngology, urology, and neurosurgery subspecialties with respect to in-person appraisals. These data aim to highlight the common practices as well as subtle differences that each subspecialty may be displaying in selecting their respective residency candidates. DESIGN: We accessed publicly available online spreadsheets between March 24 to 27 specific to the following surgical subspecialties: plastic surgery, otolaryngology, neurosurgery, and urology. We collected available information including the matched applicants' medical school, the institution at which they matched, and whether they had previous communication with their matched program. This data was then used to record whether the applicant matched at their home institution. SETTING: N/A PARTICIPANTS: N/A RESULTS: There was a statistically significant increase in the number of plastic surgery and otolaryngology applicants who matched at their home programs during the 2020 to 2021 application cycle. 12.1% and 17.2% of plastic surgery applicants matched at their home program in the 2018 to 2019 and 2019 to 2020 application cycles, compared to 25.0% during the 2020 to 2021 application cycle (p = 0.0345). Overall, 23.4% and 22.2% of otolaryngology applicants matched at their home program in the 2018 to 2019 and 2019 to 2020 application cycles, compared to 31.3% during the 2020 to 2021 application cycle (p = 0.0482). Neurosurgery and urology applicants did not demonstrate statistically significant differences in home match rates during the 2020 to 2021 application cycle (p = 0.164 and p = 0.105, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Covid-19 related restrictions in the 2020 to 2021 match cycle led residency programs to utilize novel selection mechanisms to evaluate applicants. Without visiting sub-internships during the 2020 to 2021 match cycle, some programs appear to have intentionally favored candidates with whom they were previously acquainted. The significantly higher number of international medical graduates and non-senior medical graduates among neurosurgery and urology residencies, respectively, likely washed out the home matching effect among these specialties but does not discount the importance of in-person appraisals.