The Value of Formal Research Training in Orthopaedic Surgery Residency

Abstract

This article was migrated. The article was not marked as recommended. IntroductionThe Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) requires that orthopaedic surgery residencies "maintain...an active research component."Nevertheless, there are barriers to resident participation in research. The purpose of this study was to identify the number of orthopaedic residency programs that have research curricula and to determine the effect of such programs on resident research.MethodsThe study group consisted of programs whose website included information about research curricula or training in research methods. An unpaired t-test was used to compare the mean number of publications between PGY-4 residents in the study and control groups and the mean number of publications between programs in the study group that offered protected research time versus those that did not; the t-test was two tailed with an alpha of 0.05.ResultsTwenty-seven programs, with a total of 128 PGY-4 residents, met our inclusion criteria. A random sample of 27 orthopaedic surgery residency programs with a total of 127 PGY-4 residents formed the control group. The mean number of publications was 1.6 for the study group and 1.30 for the control group. The difference in mean number of publications between the two groups was not statistically significant (p=0.22).DiscussionAlthough studies at orthopaedic residency programs in the United States demonstrate that research curricula correlate with increased resident publications, our data did not support these findings. Further inquiry is needed to identify the how to improve orthopaedic resident research productivity.