Background: Research has been a core component of the department’s graduate medical education programs since 1967. On the occasion of the 50th resident and fellow research day, we quantified published papers as well as regional and national conference presentations. We were intersted to know the impact of the program and whether changes to the program format were assoicated with quantifiable changes in scholarly products.
Methods: We identified regional and national presentations and publications through a review of electronic sources including Pubmed and Web of Science, as well as the Department’s historical archives, and more recently the department’s academic scorecard. For manuscripts we determined the citation number and index score for papers using Web of Science and Incites. We then looked at the number of publications and presentations before (1997-2006) and after (2007-2016) changes to the program format.
Results: Our search yielded 157 manuscripts and 114 presentations at regional, national, or international meetings. We identified 20 papers that exceeded the citation index relative to their category by at least two. There were 10 publications that were cited at least 50 times. The number of original projects per trainee decreased by about 20% after program changes. The proportion of projects resulting in publications was similar before (24%) compared to after (26%) the changes. There was a 9% increase in proportion of projects presented at regional and national/international conferences after program revisions.
Discussions: The longevity of the department’s resident and fellow research program reflects the importance of inquiry and scholarship as core elements of training. This analysis documents the impact of our approach to resident and fellow research and provides data to quantify the return on investments committed by the department in terms of faculty mentorship and trainee effort, staffing, and financial resources to support resident and fellow initiated research and scholarship.
Keywords: Curriculum Development/Evaluation, Publication, Research Methods
Topics: CREOG & APGO Annual Meeting, 2017, Resident, Faculty, Professionalism, Practice-Based Learning & Improvement, GME, Problem-Based Learning,
Tammy Loucks, MPH, DrPH; Ira Horowitz, MD, SM
