M. Eby1, J. Buicko1, S. Scurci1, L. Tamariz2 1University Of Miami,General Surgery,Miami, FL, USA 2University Of Miami,Population Health And Computational Medicine,Miami, FL, USA
Introduction:
Scholarly work during a surgical residency is an accreditation requirement. A motivation to do scholarly work is fellowship application. Many residency programs have published the success and failures of their research programs. However, the specific components of a successful program are unknown. Our aim was to conduct a systematic review of the published surgery research methods programs and evaluate what components increase scholarly activity.
Methods:
We performed a search of the MEDLINE database (1966 to February 2016) supplemented by manual searches of bibliographies of key relevant articles. We included studies that reported a description of the research methods program. The components that were evaluated came from literature review and the themes evaluated included a research director, mentorship, a curriculum, biostatistical support, progress meetings, funding, research day, online educational modules and protected time. We defined scholarly activity as conducting original research and presenting in a national meeting or publishing in peer-review journals.
Results:
The search strategy yielded 1161 studies, of which 9 met our eligibility criteria. The studies included 497 surgery residents and median program duration was 2 years; IQR (1.5-4). The most commonly reported theme was having a curriculum and having research progress meetings. The least commonly reported theme was having funding and having online research resources. The table shows the tertiles of the components of the research program. The components more commonly associated with higher scholarly activity were having a curriculum, research director, having an active mentorship program and having protected time. The factors related with lower scholarly activity were not having a research director and not having biostatistics support.
Conclusion:
Surgical training programs should have a research director, protected time, mentorship plans and an educational curriculum to assure research scholarly success.
