193 - Promoting scholarly productivity in pediatric post-graduate training: a scoping review

Publication Number: 193.6186

Celia Kwan, McMaster University Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, Hamilton, ON, Canada; Nardin Kirolos, University of Toronto Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Toronto, ON, Canada; Zachary Dionisopoulos, University of Toronto Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Montreal, PQ, Canada; Kimberly M. Nurse, University of Toronto / The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada; Jimin Lee, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, United States; Jenny Hotchkiss, Weill Cornell Medicine, Wayland, MA, United States; Jessie Cunningham, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada; David D’Arienzo, Montreal children’s hospital, Montreal, PQ, Canada; Alastair Fung, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada

Background: While completing a scholarly project is mandatory in North American pediatric residency programs, there is a lack of guidance regarding how programs should integrate scholarly activities into pediatric post-graduate training. Barriers to scholarly activity completion include lack of protected research time, mentorship and research training skills.

Objective: To address these barriers and enhance pediatric post-graduate scholarly activity training, we conducted a scoping review to synthesize the evidence on interventions that promote scholarly productivity among pediatric trainees.

Design/Methods: We searched Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid Embase, Web of Science, and ProQuest ERIC in July 2024 for studies reporting interventions that aimed to increase scholarly productivity among pediatric post-graduate trainees, defined as any general or subspecialty pediatric resident/fellow. The primary outcome was scholarly productivity, defined as participation in scholarly projects, presentations at conferences, publications, or research grants related to basic science or clinical research, quality improvement projects and medical education. Secondary outcomes included trainee satisfaction, research knowledge and career trajectory. Two reviewers independently screened abstracts, reviewed full texts, and extracted data, with a third reviewer resolving conflicts. We categorized included studies by intervention type.

Results: Of 6181 studies screened, 23 were included (Figure 1). Target populations included general pediatric residents (n=18) and pediatric subspecialty fellows (n=5). Intervention types included financial award, specialized electives/streams, administrative mandates, short-term research curriculum ( < 4 weeks), longitudinal research curriculum, and research mentorship (Table 1). Seven studies had no pre-intervention comparator group. Of the remaining 16 studies, 13 (81%) showed a significant improvement in scholarly productivity in the intervention group compared to control. Where comparison data was available, financial award, specialized electives/streams and short-term curricula were consistently associated with increased presentations and/or publications while other intervention types had mixed results. Only 2 studies reported medical education outputs and 2 studies reported quality improvement outputs.

Conclusion(s): Trainee financial awards and short-term curricula may improve scholarly productivity without a substantial time investment. More rigorous studies of interventions to promote scholarly productivity, particularly in quality improvement and medical education, with appropriate comparison groups, are needed.

Figure 1: PRISMA flow diagram


Table 1: Summary of included articles
AFP: Academic Foundation Programme, CI: confidence interval, Dept: department, IRB: institutional review board, OR: odds ratio, PAS: Pediatric Academic Societies, PGY: post-graduate year