Formal Mentorship as an Opportunity to Expand the Urology Pipeline: Under Represented Trainees Entering Residency (UReTER) Program Evaluation 2020-2021.

OBJECTIVE: To rank percentages of underrepresented residents in surgical subspecialties and understand the experience of mentees and mentors who participated in the inaugural University of California, San Francisco Urology UnderRepresented Trainees Entering Residency (UReTER) Mentorship Program for Black, Indigenous, and/or LatinX medical students applying into urology. METHODS: Medical student mentees across the country were recruited via social media and email listservs. Demographic information and photos of mentors were presented on the UReTER website. Medical students could choose a mentor, and once matched, both parties were notified. A survey was emailed to all participants on Urology Match Day 2021. RESULT: The 2018 -2019 ACGME Databook showed underrepresented minority residents made up 7.6% of urology residents, lagging behind neurosurgery, vascular surgery, general surgery, and obstetrics and gynecology. 71 mentees and 101 mentors volunteered for the UReTER Mentorship Program (71 mentor-mentee couplets). Overall response rate was 51% [33 mentors and 32 mentees]. Of mentees who completed the survey, 16 (47%) participated in the 2021 Urology Match; 15 (94%) matched and 6 (38%) felt that UReTER helped them match. CONCLUSION: Feedback on this pilot program was very positive including a high match rate among those who participated. Future changes to the program include expanded student outreach, increased structure, broadened mentor network. The implementation of a low-cost program to increase underrepresented applicants into Urology has great potential to increase representation and improve the field. This program can and should be replicated in all subspecialties.

Altruistic donation to improve survey responses: a global randomized trial.

OBJECTIVE: Web-based platforms have revolutionized the ability for researchers to perform global survey research. Methods to incentivize participation have been singularly focused on European and North American participants with varied results. With an ever increasing proportion of biomedical research being performed in non-western countries, assessment of novel methods to improve global survey response is timely and necessary. To that end, we created a three-arm nested randomized control trial (RCT) within a prospective cohort study to assess the impact of incentives on survey responsiveness in a global audience of biomedical researchers. RESULTS: Email invitations were sent to authors and editors involved in online publishing totaling 2426 participants from 111 countries. Overall we observed a 13.0% response rate: 13.3% for the control group, 14.4% for a group entered to win a gift card, and 11.1% for a group whose participation lead to donation to charity (p = 0.17). Year of publication nor country impacted response rate. Within subgroups, editors were significantly less likely to respond to the survey as compared to authors (6.5% vs. 18.9%; p-value < 0.01). With power to detect a 4.8% difference among groups, we could not detect an impact of incentives on global survey response.