A structured step-by-step program to increase scholarly activity

Objectives Development and maintenance of scholarly activity is a challenge for small community-based surgical training programs. The current Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education Program Requirements in General Surgery states that, "Residents should participate in scholarly activity," and "The sponsoring institution and program should allocate adequate educational resources to facilitate resident involvement in scholarly activities." We adopted a program designed to improve the quality of research projects pursued by surgical residents and to increase the number of projects submitted for both presentation and publication.

Design We hereby describe a structured step-by-step program to mentor surgical residents through clinical projects from development to publication.

Setting Community hospital with academic affiliation, located in the Southeastern United States.

Participants The Resident Scholarly Activity Program at our facility includes 2 faculty mentors who work in direct contact with all the surgical residents of our program (2 residents/y, postgraduate years 1-5). The faculty members are MD, MPH professionals who specialize in resident education and scholarly activity.

Results Implementation of Resident Scholarly Activity Program instruction and mentoring increased the number of publications in all categories defined. The number of publications and presentations increased from 6 to 28 over a 1-year period.

Conclusions A structured scholarly activity program positively affects the number of clinical projects produced by a small community-based surgical training program. Familiarity with project design and biostatistics, plus one-on-one mentoring improves the quality of research produced. A potential additional benefit is the ability to involve private surgical faculty with the residents projects.