US Dermatology Residency Program Rankings

Comment

There previously have been few attempts to rank US dermatology residency programs based on factors related to academic achievement. Individual faculty and programs have been ranked based on the number of publications in the literature.^5-7 Dermatology institutions/organizations (eg, departments, hospitals, medical schools) have been ranked based on amount of NIH funding received and number of journal citations.⁸

Dermatology residency programs have been ranked based on amount of NIH funding received annually.² Based on the prior Wu et al³ ranking algorithm for 2004 data, the institutions with the top 5 residency programs were the University of Pennsylvania, University of California, San Francisco; Yale University; New York University; and the University of Michigan.

The current study refined this ranking algorithm by including residency programs housed within the institution’s division of dermatology of a department of internal medicine, which were previously excluded from NIH funding data, as opposed to just the department of dermatology. The authors also did not count publications coauthored by faculty members at the same institution more than once. The annual amount of DF funding received was considered rather than number of grants, as this factor was thought to better reflect the scale of research being conducted. Additionally, relatively more weight was given to annual NIH funding, annual number of faculty publications, and number of faculty lectures at annual society meetings than to annual amount of DF funding and number of faculty on journal editorial boards. The University of Pennsylvania; the University of California, San Francisco; and Yale University were in the top 5 based on data from 2004 in the prior study³ and 2008 in the current study.

Distribution of grant funding and number of faculty publications in the literature often are used as a measure of scholarly achievement. Within the specialty of dermatology, the amount of NIH and DF funding received could be considered the most prestigious achievement for a residency program. Faculty members are encouraged to develop expertise in a specialized area of dermatology as well as to conduct research and publish articles in the area of their choosing. One of the most common ways to attain tenure and achieve academic recognition is by publishing articles in peer-reviewed journals with high impact factors. Other factors that demonstrate expertise and accomplishment in one’s field include giving lectures at national society meetings and sitting on editorial boards of prestigious journals.

The authors deemed these factors to be the most reflective of academic achievement in a dermatology residency program. It should come as no surprise that the top programs according to our algorithm generally are regarded as the most prestigious programs in the country.

The current study did have some limitations. For instance, residency programs were ranked solely based on academic achievements. Although academic achievement is an important aspect of the reputation of a dermatology residency program, it does not account for other important aspects of a program such as commitment to teaching and patient care. These aspects are difficult to measure and were not included in our ranking algorithm. For this reason, there are many excellent residency programs that may not be listed in this article as top programs but still provide outstanding clinical training and patient care. Our ranking algorithm is more indicative of a program’s commitment to research and scholarship and does not necessarily reflect how well a program trains its residents.

The factors included in our ranking algorithm also were somewhat arbitrary. The 5 factors that were chosen by the authors were considered to be most reflective of academic achievement and also will be easy to obtain in future years to replicate these rankings; however, there are other important factors that could have been used instead or in addition to the factors we chose. Some of the chosen factors were more important than others, so a decision was made to weight the factors. In-training examination scores from the American Board of Dermatology, boards passing rate, or percentage of residents who received fellowships or academic appointments were not used because this information is not publicly available. The current study also appeared to favor larger residency programs. Programs with fewer faculty members generally receive less research funding and have fewer publications, fewer faculty members on journal editorial boards, and fewer lecturers at national society meetings. This factor was not controlled for in the original analysis, as larger programs generally are thought to be more prestigious; therefore, this bias should be accounted for in the rankings.

Conclusion

Based on our weighted ranking algorithm, the top 5 dermatology residency programs in 2008 were University of California, San Francisco; Northwestern University; University of Pennsylvania; Yale University; and Stanford University.

Acknowledgements—We thank all of the program coordinators, full-time faculty members, program directors, chairs, and chiefs who were kind enough to field our questions if we had any missing data about their programs. We thank Mary H. Black, PhD, Pasadena, California, for her contribution to the analytical plan.