3573 - The Effect of Institutional Support vs. Peer Influence on Match Rates into Radiation Oncology over 5 Years: 2019 to 2023

O. U. Trumble; Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL

Purpose/Objective(s): Limited exposure to Radiation Oncology (RO) during undergraduate medical education, is unfortunately prevalent which can impact a medical student’s choice of specialty. This can be affected by institutional resources or awareness of them. However, another potential influence is a student’s peers, as peer mentorship is also able to impact a student’s decision to pursue a specialty. This study seeks to identity which factors most sway medical students’ pursuits in matching decisions, focusing primarily on peers and institutional support structures. Materials/

Methods: We compiled a list of accredited medical schools from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)’s and American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM)’s websites. We referenced Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)’s website for a list of RO residency programs (RP). Then, we used the schools’ official websites to catalog if they had the following: home RO program, an Oncology Interest group (IG), RO IG, RO elective course, and their match lists for 2019-2023, if publicly available. Schools were excluded if they did not have publicly available match data or if their first class graduated after 2019. We then assembled a list of all RO programs from the ACGME website to confirm resident placement. To account and control for both individual and combined variable significance, we applied a multivariate logistic regression model to the data.

Results: We identified 130 Allopathic and 38 Osteopathic medical schools, 168 total. We found the most significant factors were, (1) peer matching, if more than one student matched RO the same year from the same medical school and (2) a home RO program. Peer matching was both the most commonly statistically significant variable and had the largest impact

Conclusion: We found that peer influence was a key determinant in pursuing a successful match in RO, and that institutional resources, such as a home RO program or RP, did not have as strong of an impact. Other variables studied were similar. Additionally, nearly all variables had stronger statistical significance for DO schools. One main constraint of our study is that we relied on data gathered from publicly available sources, which may contain inaccuracies. However, based on our investigation, we recommend further research and future implementation of peer mentorship initiatives.

Abstract 3573 – Table 1: Coefficient (in percent) of change and p-value Key words: Radiation Oncology, Peer Mentorship, Specialty Interest

	2023	2022	2021	2020	2019
Combined- Peer Matching	+59% [1.2-10]	+49% [8.8-6]	+54% [5.8-8]	+57%[1.07-11]	+46% [2.78-9]
MD- Peer Matching	+58% [8.2-9]	+51%[1.6-5]	+52% [2.6-6]	+55% [2.53-9]	+43%[2.1-7]
DO- Peer Matching	+156% [1.2-10]	+151% [1.2-10]	+64% [0.56]	+125% [0.0038]	+88% [0.016]
Combined- Home RO Program	+16%[0.12]	-1.6%[0.89]	-7.8%[0.50]	+33%[0.0013]	+28%[0.0048]
Combined- Home RO RP	+16% [0.12]	+1%[0.91]	-8%[0.38]	+5% [0.55]	+5% [0.57]