Ethical, Equitable, and Transparent Recruitment

Endocrinology Fellowship Program Commitment to Ethical, Equitable, and Transparent Recruitment Procedures

• The overall goal of the endocrinology fellowship at the University of Cincinnati is to prepare physicians to serve as highly competent specialists in the diagnosis and treatment of Endocrine disorders.  Our fellowship program will enable the trainees to gain the knowledge and skills necessary for providing cost-effective, ethical, and humanistic care of patients with endocrine disorders. The program aims to provide a training environment that fosters a culture of evidence-based medicine, teach critical thinking and analysis, thereby instilling a commitment to life-long learning.
  
• We recognize and support the mission of our parent institutions, The University of Cincinnati, College of Medicine, UC Health, and the Department of Internal Medicine, to provide state-of-the-art health care to all people regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity, geography, or ability to pay.
• In the recruitment of faculty, fellows, and support staff, the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism does not discriminate on the basis of age, sex, race, ethnicity, religion, ancestry, financial status, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, disability, veteran status or protected veteran status, or geography. This is consistent with and supports the Diversity Policy of our Parent Institutions, University of Cincinnati, College of Medicine, UC Health, and our Department of Medicine.
  

Desirable qualities we look for in fellowship applicants:

Our Fellowship receives between 100 and 200 applications per year, out of whom about 30-40 applicants are selected for personal interviews. The selection of applicants for interviews is based on the review of their documented experience, attitude, competencies, and performance metrics. Emphasis is placed on candidates who have demonstrated a commitment to their education, their service to others, and their contribution to learning. We are looking for enthusiastic fellows with documented academic excellence, zeal for further learning, and passion for continuing personal and professional growth.  We aim to recruit individuals with well-balanced portfolios in various ACGME defined competencies.

Our fellowship recruitment committee:

Our fellowship recruitment committee is led by the Program Director and comprises of core clinical faculty, one of the senior fellows and our program coordinator.

The fellowship recruitment committee is responsible for the oversight of fellowship application review, an invitation for personal interviews, the conduct of interviews and the preparation of final rank order list of candidates.

Review of applications and invitation for personal interviews:

When applications become available in ERAS, our program coordinator downloads them for review by our fellowship recruitment committee. Assigned members from the fellowship recruitment committee review and grade all applications according to a structured application review form. The entire ERAS application is reviewed thoroughly. A score is assigned to each reviewed application and those applicants meeting the threshold (determined by the program director) are invited for personal interview. This selection occurs early in the application season. Although an updated list of candidates will be reviewed again later in the cycle, interview selection is made relatively early in the process.

The interview day:

We will only offer virtual interviews for the 2022 – 2023 recruitment cycle.

Interviews will be conducted on the Zoom platform.  The interviewers will be provided specific training on the use of virtual interview technology. Instructions will also be provided to the interviewing candidates. Our program coordinator sends out program/institution-specific and Cincinnati-related information including virtual tour of our location, institution, and city.

About 5-6 fellowship candidates are interviewed on a typical interview day. The Program Director provides an overview of fellowship program to the candidates at the start of interview followed by a casual meeting with our current fellows. This is followed by meeting with various members of the fellowship recruitment committee. Each session lasts for 20 minutes and takes place in individual breakout rooms with 5 minutes breaks between the interviews. On a typical day, the fellowship candidate will have 3-4 individual interviews.

Individual interview sessions are followed by one of our fellowship educational sessions (journal club, endocrine grand rounds, or clinical case conferences). The interview day concludes by a wrap-up collective session for any concluding remarks by the PD or fellow candidates.

The interviews are structured to evaluate a candidate’s academic, professional, and scholarly achievements as well as their behavioral and inter-personal aspects. The interviews grade the candidates based upon their interactions on a uniform scoring rubric prepared by the recruitment committee.

Finalizing the rank order list:

Our program strictly abides by the NRMP matching protocol and policies and participates in the NRMP Specialties matching program. Under rare circumstances, selection of candidates outside of NRMP match occurs only when duly approved by the APDEM Match Subcommittee.

The program coordinator maintains a working graduated list of candidates based upon their scores as noted on the evaluation rubric scales. This listed is forwarded to all members of the fellowship recruitment committee 1-2 days prior to the Rank Order List (ROL) meeting that is held at the end of interview season about a week before the ROL submission deadline date.

At the ROL meeting, all candidates interviewed during the season are discussed in detail giving an opportunity to all members of the recruitment committee to weigh in on their respective positions on the ROL. A final list is composed by the end of meeting based upon the consensus decision by the committee. The Program Director has the final discretion to modify the rank list prior to submission. However, based on mutual respect within the recruitment subcommittee such an occurrence is extremely unlikely. The final ROL is submitted within 72 hours of the rank meeting.

Post-NRMP match recruitment review:

The recruitment committee meets following NRMP match for an introspective review of the selection process based upon the program match performance, feedback obtained by the invited fellowship candidates as well as other members of recruitment committee. Further recommendations for any modification or improvement of the recruitment process are made to ensure continuous quality and performance improvement.