Mentoring of Medical Students with an interest in Orthopaedic Surgery

Orthopaedic Surgery has become very competitive and close to 40% of medical students who apply for a residency program annually are unable to secure a position. Hispanics are greatly underrepresented in the orthopaedic surgery profession, and less than 3% of orthopedic surgeons in practice today are Hispanic. This is clearly not representative of the demographics of our population.

The AALOS is very interested in developing a mentorship program to pair academic orthopaedic surgeons who are familiar with the match process with Hispanic Medical Students.

In general to be competitive a student must have a strong academic record and competitive scores on the USMLE. In addition the successful applicant has 16 listings in their research portfolio including publications, presentations, abstracts and poster / scientific projects.

The match process itself has become more difficult as students are permitted to signal 30 programs, signal preferred geographic areas, and urban versus rural.

Hispanic students who attend medical school at schools that do not have an orthopaedic department may have trouble getting accurate advice on the process and the approach. For additional information on Mentoring, please contact us at jbode@aalos.org.

*The mentoring program is asking for academic orthopaedic surgeons who are actively involved with a residency program and participate in the residency match to volunteer to be paired with 2 or 3 medical students. This is a mentoring role and can help guide the students in the match and make them more competitive.