• Mariam Salisu Orhurhu, Vwaire Orhurhu, Bisola Salisu, Adeniyi Abimbola, and Steven P Cohen.
• Department of Anesthesiology, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA msalisu@mgh.harvard.edu.
• Reg Anesth Pain Med. 2020 Aug 1; 45 (8): 589-596.

BackgroundNumerous factors are considered in the academic promotion of pain medicine physicians. In this study, we investigated the importance of research productivity, career duration, leadership, and gender on attaining professorship in chronic pain medicine fellowship programs in the USA.MethodsWe identified 98 pain fellowship programs in the American Medical Association Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database. Faculty demographics and institutional characteristics were obtained from institutional websites, and h-index (number of publications (h) cited at least h times) and m-index (h-index divided by research career duration) were calculated from Scopus. A nested mixed effect hierarchical modeling was used to determine factors that were associated with attaining professorship.ResultsA total of 696 chronic pain medicine faculty members from 98 academic pain fellowship programs were identified, of whom 74.7% were males. For the 15.5% who were full professors, the median h-index was 16.5 (6.0 to 30.0), the median career duration was 20.5 (16.0 to 27.0) years, and the median m-index was 0.7 (0.3 to 1.3). In an adjusted analysis, the top quartile (compared with bottom) h-index (OR 6.27; 95% CI: 2.11 to 18.59), publication citations (OR 1.13; 95% CI: 1.10 to 1.21), division chief position (OR 3.72; 95% CI: 1.62 to 8.50), institutions located in the western region (OR 3.81; 95% CI: 1.52 to 9.57), and graduating from a foreign medical school (OR 1.98; 95% CI: 1.10 to 3.92) were independently associated with attaining professorship (p<0.05), but gender was not (p=0.71).ConclusionsOur study shows that, higher h-index, publication citations, division chief position, affiliation at a lower tier medical school, and location in the Western region were independently associated with full professorship, whereas gender was not. The identified variables for professorship may be considered as factors in faculty promotions.© American Society of Regional Anesthesia & Pain Medicine 2020. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.

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