M. Mankarious1,2, E. Palmquist1, L. Chen1 1Tufts Medical Center,Department Of Surgery,Boston, MA, USA 2Tufts University School of Medicine,Boston, MA, USA
Introduction:
Medical education research is a quickly growing field of interest that has attracted many brilliant minds over the last decade that address this multifaceted landscape. With the surgical educational environment undergoing many significant changes, new topics emerged with increasing trends and interesting results. In this study, we utilize available abstracts from Academic Surgical Congress (ASC) over the past years to examine emerging topics and trends in medical education research.
Methods:
ASC abstracts over the past four years were obtained from the ASC website. University and state affiliation of the first author for each abstract was collected. Abstracts were categorized according to topic (Curriculum/Teaching, Innovations, Assessment, Program Evaluation, Wellbeing/Burnout, and Miscellaneous) and design (Descriptive, Test Assessment, Relational, and Qualitative) based on previously published categories. Miscellaneous topics were recategorized based on theme.
Results:
A total of 429 abstracts were obtained from previous four ASC meetings. 405 abstracts were from within the United States and 24 from other countries. 29.6% of abstracts within the USA came from Wisconsin, Illinois, California, and Texas.
Overall number of abstracts nearly doubled from 77 in 2015 to 140 in 2018. Descriptive studies were the most common research design (41%), followed by test assessment (20%), qualitative (18%), relationship (18%), and experimental (3%). Annual topic proportions were considerably stable with 21% curriculum and teaching, 26% technical and performance assessment, 6% wellbeing and burnout, and 5% program evaluations. 33% of the abstracts belonged to the miscellaneous category. Of the miscellaneous, most common topics addressed Global Health (19.15%) and Gender/Race (14.18%). Remainder of miscellaneous topics included personality traits of students, residents, and surgeons, experience and overall trends in practice, impact and utilization of social media, resident work-hour limits, and financial questions in surgical training.
Conclusion:
Research into medical education is a transforming and evolving field. Since 2000, there has been an increasing number of studies as well as new prominent topics that are more relevant to the current educational environment. Up to date knowledge of these current topic trends in medical education may inform future research. For instance, the increasing trend towards evaluating and restructuring global health programs points to the increasing prevalence of the topic to residency programs as it becomes an integrated aspect of many residency programs. Similarly, research regarding gender and racial inequalities in the surgical environment points to the changing landscape and the importance of creating a more inclusive environment.