Educational Background and Demographic Characteristics of Anesthesiology Department Chairs in the United States

Academic anesthesiology department chairs face significant responsibilities, yet formal leadership pathways remain unclear. The purpose of this study was to characterize the educational backgrounds and career trajectories of current U.S. anesthesiology department chairs. Chair information was sought for all 192 Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education-accredited anesthesiology residency programs. During data collection, 40 were excluded due to absence of a designated chair or insufficient publicly available information, yielding a final sample of 152 chairs. The most common medical schools that the chairs attended were the University of Washington, the University of Chicago, and Johns Hopkins University (each, n = 4; 2.6%). Massachusetts General Hospital was the most frequent residency site (13/149; 8.7%) and fellowship site (9/84, 10.7%). Median time from residency to chair appointment was 21 yr (interquartile range [IQR], 15 to 27) and median tenure was 5 yr (IQR, 3 to 9). Most chairs had modest to moderate scholarship (Hirsch Index: 1 to 15 in 54.1%) with a median of 14 (IQR, 4 to 34). These findings suggest pathways to chair are frequently diverse, often non-research-intensive, and support the imperative for structured leadership development.