Assessing publication rates from medical students’ mandatory research projects in the Netherlands: a follow-up study of 10 cohorts of medical students

Abstract

Objectives The medical field is facing a clinician-scientist shortage. Medical schools could foster the clinician-scientist workforce by offering students research opportunities. Most medical schools offer elective research programmes. Subsequently, a subset of doctors graduates without any research experience. Mandatory research projects may be more sufficient to develop clinician-scientist, but take more supervision and curricular time. There is limited insight in the scientific outcomes of mandatory research experiences. This study aims to examine publication rates of a mandatory research experience, identify factors associated with publication, and includes postgraduate research engagement.Design and setting Prospective follow-up study involving 10 cohorts of medical students’ mandatory research projects from Leiden University Medical Center.Participants All medical students who conducted their research project between 2008 and 2018 (n=2329) were included.Main outcome measure Publication rates were defined as peer-reviewed scientific publications, including research papers, reviews, and published meeting abstracts. Postgraduate research engagement was defined as research participation and dissemination of research at scientific conferences or in journals.Results In total, 644 (27.7%) of all mandatory research experiences resulted in publication, with students mainly as first (n=984, 42.5%) or second author (n=587, 25.3%) and above world average citation impact (mean normalised journal score 1.29, mean normalised citation score 1.23). Students who conducted their research in an academic centre (adjusted OR 2.82; 95% CI 2.10 to 3.77), extended their research (adjusted OR 1.73; 95% CI 1.35 to 2.20), were involved in an excellency track (adjusted OR 2.08; 95% CI 1.44 to 3.01), or conducted clinical (adjusted OR 2.08; 95% CI 1.15 to 3.74) or laboratory (adjusted OR 2.16; 95% CI 1.16 to 4.01) research published their research more often. Later as junior doctors, this group significantly more often disseminate their research results at scientific conferences (adjusted OR 1.89; 95% CI 1.11 to 3.23) or in journals (adjusted OR 1.98; 95% CI 1.14 to 3.43).Conclusions Our findings suggest that a significant subset of hands-on mandatory research projects with flexible learning pathways result in tangible research output with proper impact and that such successful experiences can be considered as diving board towards a research-oriented career.