Assessment of Medical Student Research Mentorship Based on Publications in ASTRO Journals

Abstract

<h3>Purpose/Objective(s)</h3> Mentored research opportunities often stimulate medical student (MS) interest in a particular field and help them to be competitive residency applicants. Many MSs pursue at least one research project during medical school. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges faculty roster there are approximately 1,800 radiation oncology (RO) faculty at US MD-granting medical schools; however, little is known about whether radiation oncologists are providing adequate research opportunities to MSs who are potentially interested in the specialty. We hypothesize that relatively few academic RO faculty mentor MSs in research, and the minority of publications in American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) journals will have MS co-authors. <h3>Materials/Methods</h3> Data for this study derived from a review of the byline and abstract of all 1,785 scientific articles (i.e., clinical, basic science, training/education) and case reports published from 2019-2021 in The International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, and Physics (IJROBP), Practical Radiation Oncology (PRO), and Advances in Radiation Oncology (ARO). Review, editorial, and correspondence article types were excluded. MS authors were defined as individuals affiliated with a medical school but lacking an MD, DO, or PhD degree. The primary faculty mentor was defined as the senior (last) author. Information related to article type, methods, institution, and author position was recorded. Descriptive statistics and Chi square test were used where appropriate. <h3>Results</h3> A total of 105 of 1,785 articles (6%) included a MS author, among which 72 (69%) were clinical, 13 (11%) training/education, 12 (11%) case reports, and 8 (8%) basic science. MS authors were more common for publications in ARO (9%) than PRO (6%) or IJROBP (4%, <i>p</i> = 0.002). Thirty-eight (32%) MSs were first author, 26 (22%) second author, and 55 (46%) third author or beyond. There were 88 unique faculty mentors for these articles, with 10 mentors (11%) on 2 or more MS publications, and 57 mentors (64.7%) sharing the same institution as the MS. The median number of articles per mentor institution was 1 (interquartile range 1-2), and the mentor institutions in the upper quartile in terms of number of MS publications accounted for 53 (50.5%) of all MS publications. <h3>Conclusion</h3> Over the past 3 years, a small fraction of publications in ASTRO journals included MS authors, with mentorship disproportionately from a small number of academic faculty at select institutions. Though RO faculty may mentor MSs on projects published in other journals, efforts to more broadly encourage academic RO faculty to offer MSs research opportunities on RO-related projects may help stimulate more interest in RO, and reverse the recent trend of fewer residency applicants.