261- Take advantage of medical students by overloading them with too much work.
- Judge residents and students too harshly on their writing skills. We have all had
pages bleed red. Medical writing is a skill that is attainable with mentorship and
practice. - Expect the dedicated research personnel to write up all protocols, abstracts, pre-
sentations, posters, and manuscripts. In most cases, they will not be a trained
physician in your specialty and doing so will greatly diminish the scholarly
output. - Ask a resident or medical student to participate in a project and then take an
inordinate amount of time to respond or do your part when the time comes. This
is the biggest research enthusiasm killer we have seen. Students and residents are
very excited to share their work (a type of which they may be doing for the first
time) with you. Acknowledge its receipt immediately and find something about
it that’s great and tell them. Give them a realistic time frame when your thorough
response and next steps can be expected.
D o ’s
- Engage residents from the beginning of their training to help establish and rein-
force the research culture in the residency. - Identify medical students as early as possible (even in their first year) allowing
them as much time as possible to get involved and actually complete as many
projects as they are willing to take on. - Assure students that saying no to a project is always an option because they are
students first. Ten research projects will not help their residency prospects if their
board scores and grades suffer. - Allow residents and medical students to help in invited scholarly activity that
will help increase the tally of scholarly output, provide almost sure-bet publica-
tions, and add another aspect to practice medical writing. - Do advocate for resident and medical student presentations and national,
regional, and local conferences. - Create research teams that include at least one faculty, resident, and student
(more if necessary). This allows for coverage and progression of studies during
busy times of certain team members.
Summary
Creating a solid research infrastructure that includes willing faculty, residents, stu-
dents, statisticians, and research personnel creates mutually symbiotic relationship
for all parties involved. Faculty are able to take on more scholarly activity knowing
that they will have help in completing their commitments. The increased research
output will fulfill the ACGME research requirement by residents, but it will also
increase scholarly activity for faculty that may lead to grant funding and academic
advancement. Residents and students will become more competitive candidates for
fellowship and residencies. Studies have shown the importance of research to
surgical education. Sabir et al. showed that 63% of residents were satisfied with the
research requirement, and the same number felt it should continue; 80% of
15 Optimizing Research in Surgical Residents and Medical Students