Introduction: The Endourological Society was founded in 1983 and a key aspect of its mission is the promotion of research, education and the evidence-based medical and surgical practice of endourology and minimally invasive surgery. We examined the history of the Endourological Society through the lens of its fellowship programs in the United States (U.S.) and attempted to evaluate the growth of its fellowship programs and the educational spread of fellowship graduates by determining how many went into academics and became educational leaders in the field.
Methods: A review of the list of fellowship programs published annually in the Journal of Endourology from 1987 to 2015 allowed us to track the growth in fellowship programs over time. We reviewed the Endourological Society fellowship database and the website for each U.S. fellowship program for the names of their graduates. A survey was sent to each fellowship program director with a list of their graduates asking them to verify the names and to identify those graduates who had pursued a career in academic urology and whether they had served as fellowship program director, residency program director or department chairperson. Fellowship program directors were also queried for what they believed was the most important goal of their fellowship. Seventeen of the 52 U.S. program directors (33%) responded to the survey. For those programs that did not respond to the survey each graduate’s name was searched via Google, LinkedIn, and/or Doximity to determine if they had pursued a career in academic urology and served in a leadership position.
Results: The number of U.S. Endourological Society fellowships has increased from 11 in 1987 to 52 in 2021.
577 fellows have graduated from an Endourological Society Fellowship in the U.S. from 1987 to 2021. 250 graduates have pursued a career in academic urology (43.3%), 46 have served as fellowship program director (8.0%), 9 as residency program director (1.6%) and 13 have served as department chairperson (2.3%). Of the fellowship program director survey respondents, when queried about the most important goal of fellowship: 76% stated it was to teach endourology and minimally invasive surgical skills, 18% believed it was to develop future leaders in the field and 6% stated it was to train future academicians.
Conclusions: The progress of the Endourological Society can be directly tied to the historical growth of its fellowship programs and the pursuit of an academic career by many of its graduates leading them to become the current and future educational leaders in the field.
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