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Residents
The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has outlined
requirements for scholarly activity and changed the focus from structure and pro-
cess to tangible scholarly outcomes in 2013 [ 4 ]. The requirements differ between
specialties based on the ACGME specialty-specific references for Designated
Institutional Officials (DIO), but there are three consistent requirements across all
specialties and subspecialties [ 1 ]:
- The curriculum must advance residents’ knowledge of the basic principles of
research, including how research is conducted, evaluated, explained to patients,
and applied to patient care. - Residents should participate in scholarly activity.
- The sponsoring institution and program should allocate adequate educational
resources to facilitate resident involvement in scholarly activity.
These ACGME requirements have forced institutions to implement policies
requiring that all residents complete at least one research project in some kind of
capacity during the tenure of their training [ 1 ]. Some program requirements may go
beyond the basic minimum. In order to help facilitate this requirement, some of
these programs provide designated or protected research time which can range from
a 1 month research-only rotation, a full research year, to just protected time incor-
porated into each week [ 5 , 6 ].
Residents seek to do research for three primary reasons. First, they do it to fulfill
their ACGME and institutional requirements for their postgraduate training, usually
resulting in a one-and-done project. Second, they want to further specialize and will
apply to fellowship programs or to an academic position and know that the more
research they do the greater likelihood of being accepted to their top institutions.
Finally, they have a genuine interest in research and answering questions that are
posed to them or they see as being recurrent in their training and want to strive to
seek out those answers.
Medical Students
The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) conducted a survey in
2012–2013 asking all medical schools whether or not they have a research
requirement for students. Of the 136 schools that responded, 49 medical schools
confirmed a research requirement [ 7 ]. The types of research allowed to fulfill
the requirement included basic science, biology/chemistry/physics, bioengi-
neering/informatics, clinical, translational, public health/health services, or
ethics/humanities/social sciences. The survey showed an even distribution
among students on when they conducted the research throughout the 4 years,
including a fifth category designated for the time frame between the first and
second year.
D.I. Dynda et al.