Springboard to an academic career-A national medical student research program.

Geir W Jacobsen,Marianne H Stien,Helge Ræder,Ludvig A Munthe,Vegard Skogen

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0195527

Abstract

Over the last decades there has been a decline in the recruitment of medical students into academia in all medical fields. Concurrently, medical research has increasingly included other disciplines in multidisciplinary convergence, introducing an unmet recruitment gap and requirement for medical researchers. To counteract the trend and recruit students to academic medicine, a national intercalated Medical Student Research Program (MSRP) was established in Norway in 2002. A preliminary evaluation in 2009 suggested that the MSRP had resulted in recruitment, but could not conclude on a lasting effect beyond graduation in a study that did not include any controls. These results led us to hypothesize that the MSRP could increase the number of PhD degrees and attract medical students towards academic medicine. Adopting a case cohort design, we here report that the intercalated MSRP had a significant impact of the throughput of physician-scientists to PhD, by increasing the rate of PhD completion 10-fold (p<0.001). Moreover, almost twice as many MSRP physicians reported an academic aspiration (49% vs 22%, p<0.001). Results suggested that an MSRP-like approach could efficiently address the unmet recruitment gap and strengthen the medical disciplines in medical research.

Highlights

During the 1990s there was a steady decrease in the proportion of medical candidates in Norway who pursued an academic career and completed a doctoral degree [1]
The Medical Student Research Program (MSRP) medical degree (MD) were compared with a control group that consisted of two individually age and sex matched class peers from the year of admission to their respective medical faculties, but who had not applied for admission to the program
We identified as cases every medical candidate who had been enrolled in the program from the inception in 2002 and had obtained a medical degree (MD) between 2006 and spring 2014

Summary

Introduction

During the 1990s there was a steady decrease in the proportion of medical candidates in Norway who pursued an academic career and completed a doctoral degree [1]. This mirrored international trends and caused concern as the decline involved all medical fields, including basic, clinical, paraclinical, and public health research [2,3,4,5]. A number of initiatives have since been launched to counteract the trend. A review underscored the need for evidence from longitudinal follow-up that included the residency period and early

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion