Residency completion rates

[fantasty]

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Do residencies ever have to share their completion rates? I imagine all programs track that, and I would think it would be a reported statistic during site visits / program reviews. But, I don't recall ever seeing that on [EDIT: FREIDA - one of those acronyms] and don't think I've heard anyone ask during interview seasons. If the rates ever were disclosed, I guess they could be given as 3 year averages to deal with anonymity and outliers.

I'm not sure that I've even seen aggregate statistics of completion rates (either for all trainees or aggregate by specialty). This is probably a remedial question, but if you were looking for aggregate rates by specialty, would you start with ACGME, the specialty society, or publications in MedEd / Academic Medicine journals?

 

[Mad Jack]

The only information I've ever seen on resident attrition was an academic paper on surgery residency attrition rates. Would be curious to know if anything else is out there.

 

[NotAProgDirector]

I've never been asked.

If this was to be a standardized measure, you'd need to decide what "counts". Is it everyone who doesn't finish, for any reason? What if one of my residents decides to transfer into Radiology? Or becomes extremely ill and resigns? Trying to separate "failed out" from "left for a good reason" is probably too complicated and easily abused, so the best metric would be percent finishing program, all comers.

 

[Raryn]

Do residencies ever have to share their completion rates? I imagine all programs track that, and I would think it would be a reported statistic during site visits / program reviews. But, I don't recall ever seeing that on [EDIT: FREIDA - one of those acronyms] and don't think I've heard anyone ask during interview seasons. If the rates ever were disclosed, I guess they could be given as 3 year averages to deal with anonymity and outliers.

I'm not sure that I've even seen aggregate statistics of completion rates (either for all trainees or aggregate by specialty). This is probably a remedial question, but if you were looking for aggregate rates by specialty, would you start with ACGME, the specialty society, or publications in MedEd / Academic Medicine journals?

This is the first thing I found on google for overall attrition rate comparison. Comes from http://www.jgme.org/doi/full/10.4300/JGME-D-12-00141.1

 

[Law2Doc]

...but I think a root cause analysis shows it was a good thing for each person involved, not a malicious action on the part of the program.

This. Raw attrition numbers are pretty useless because you don't want to equate the person who left because they had a baby, or who transferred closer to a relocated spouse or who chose to switch specialties altogether with the person who was thrown out or non-renewed for cause. The latter is going to be the minority so it would be futile to try and draw conclusions. Non-renewal or firing data is what you really want, not "attrition", but I am not aware that this data is widely known outside of programs and so you'd have to gather data from people in programs on a program by program basis.

And as mentioned, one person not being renewed at a small program every couple of years is going to look like a higher percentage than a couple of people every year at a very big program, so I think looking at it as a "rate" or "percentage" is potentially misleading.

 

[Law2Doc]

This is the first thing I found on google for overall attrition rate comparison. Comes from http://www.jgme.org/doi/full/10.4300/JGME-D-12-00141.1

That's an interesting article, and seems to suggest that the vast majority leaving OB do it to go into another specialty. I'm assuming OP was really trying to see who didn't complete residency for less voluntary reasons, though.

 

[gutonc]

I'm assuming OP was really trying to see who didn't complete residency for less voluntary reasons, though.

Of course. But as you well know, just like every other time that question gets asked here, it remains unanswerable.