Independent Department Status in Plastic Surgery Has Improved Academic Productivity

PURPOSE: Recent trends indicate a transition from plastic surgery divisions within larger general surgery departments toward independent plastic surgery departments. Benefits of independent departmental status include greater financial, academic, educational, and administrative autonomy1 However, there is a dearth of research regarding faculty advancement and research output among these organizational units. The goal of this study was to understand the comparative states of scholarship at departments and divisions of plastic surgery. METHODS: All independent and integrated residency programs were identified via American Medical Association Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database Access and the American Council of Academic Plastic Surgeons. From each institution’s website, department or division status, and names of faculty members were extracted. For each faculty, bibliometric profiles were created using the Scopus and iCite databases. Lifetime and five-year h-indexes, and subsequently, m-quotients (h-index divided by years since first publication) were acquired from the Scopus database. Mean relative citation ratio (m-RCR) and weighted relative citation ratio (w-RCR) were obtained from the iCite database. Institutions were then categorized under either a department or division and data were compared between groups using a Mann-Whitney U test with a predetermined level of significance of p<0.05. RESULTS: 94 institutions with integrated or independent training programs were included in the analysis. Of these, 77 had a division of plastic surgery and 17 had independent departmental status. All departments had an integrated plastic surgery program, and seven departments (41%) had an additional independent program. Of the divisions, 66 (86%) had an integrated program and 40 (52%) had an independent residency program. Collectively, these institutions had 1120 plastic surgery faculty. Overall, plastic surgeons had an average lifetime h-index of 11.20, 5-year h-index of 3.40, and m-quotient of 0.58. Stratification by organizational structure revealed significance in academic productivity in departments compared to divisions in the lifetime h-index (14.06 vs. 12.95; p = 0.045) and 5-year h-index (4.36 vs. 3.97; p = 0.018) metrics. There was no significance when considering the m-quotient (0.68 vs. 0.65; p = 0.083), m-RCR (1.36 vs. 1.19; p = 0.22), and w-RCR (31.67 vs. 21.04; p = 0.13). CONCLUSIONS: Previous literature suggests that the organizational transition of plastic surgery toward departmental status confers quantifiable benefits in academic performance for faculty.2 These previous studies were limited in scope and are outdated. Here, we observed statistically significant differences in academic productivity between departments and divisions of plastic surgery, when analyzing Scopus’ lifetime and five-year h indexes. These findings, in conjunction with the other metrics that were not significant but trended toward increased academic productivity for independent plastic surgery departments can be used to substantiate the benefit of departmental status and for benchmarking the academic productivity of faculty and programs at different institutions. REFERENCES: 1. Lawrence W, Rohrich R, Larson D, et al. Association of Academic Chairmen of Plastic Surgery White Paper on Departmental Status. Plast Reconstr Surg 2009;124(1):293-297. 2. Loewenstein SN, Duquette S, Valsangkar N, et al. Does the Organization of Plastic Surgery Units into Independent Departments Affect Academic Productivity? Plast Reconstr Surg 2017; 140(5):1059-1064.