Plastic surgery trainees practicing in your backyard? An analysis of career patterns for fellowship and residency graduates

Background: The geographic proclivities of plastic surgery trainees have important ramifications for the field of plastic surgery.Methods: Names of American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) members who were board-certified in 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2019 were compiled for a cross-sectional analysis of geographic trends.Results: A total of 811 practitioners were reviewed, and 31 lacked sufficient data for further analysis. Plastic surgeons with large metropolitan-based practices were more likely to have trained in large urban areas for residency and fellowship (odds ratio of 4.06; 95% CI, 2.94 to 5.60, and odds ratio of 3.61; 95% CI, 1.90 to 6.85, respectively). 52% of subspecialty fellows and 46% of residents went on to establish practices over 500 miles apart from their respective training locations. Approximately 20% of residents and fellows established practices within 20 miles of their respective training institutions, and there was no significant difference for average distance between fellowship and practice location or between residency and practice location when differenti-ating based on education background (p = 0.16 and p = 0.22, respectively). The year of ABPS certification and gender also had no significant effect on the average distance between training location and current practice (p > 0.05).Conclusions: Data showed some persistent geographic tendencies that inform future practice location. A small minority of trainees chose to establish practices in the immediate vicinity of training locations, and geographic trends were largely independent of subspecialty fellowship type, gender, and career length.