Family Medicine Resident Scholarly Activity Production, Dissemination, and Infrastructure: a CERA survey

Context Family Medicine (FM) produces the least publications and holds the smallest amount of NIH funds compared to other medical specialties. This lack of scholarship hinders the progression of primary care and relies on specialists’ research and opinions to dictate our specialty. Research exposure and skill acquisition in residency may be part of the solution, but the current state of scholarly activity in FM residency programs is incompletely understood. The most recent study in 2011 demonstrated that 53.9% of programs had <50% of their residents participating in research. Current ACGME scholarly activity requirements give programs flexibility with the types of scholarly activity residents conduct. Accurately describing the current scholarly activity among FM residency programs requires quantifying and detailing the specifics of programs’ output.

Objective To characterize FM resident scholarly activity based on Boyer’s paradigm of scholarship and correlate productivity with program characteristics.

Study Design and Analysis Cross-sectional survey analyzed by proportions and Chi-squared test of independence.

Dataset and Instrument 2023 Omnibus CERA Program Directors survey.

Population United States FM residency program directors.

Outcome Measures Relationship between program characteristics and scholarly activity output.

Results Most FM residency programs report <50% of their residents exceed the minimum requirements (75.2%), present oral/poster presentations (69.3%), or publish a peer-reviewed manuscript (89.9%). However, 50.5% of programs want to increase their residents’ scholarly activity output. Correlates to programs’ residents exceeding ACGME requirements included university-based programs in larger communities with access to faculty mentorship, scholarly activity curricula, IRB, medical librarian, and statistician. Compared to programs that struggle to meet requirements, these programs performed more scholarship of integration by producing literature reviews and participating in the FPIN program.

Conclusions FM resident scholarly activity production has not increased over the past decade, and many programs seek to increase their residents’ scholarly activity output. Programs that struggle to meet requirements are less likely to have the infrastructure to perform scholarly activity. The FPIN program and learning collaboratives may serve as avenues for residency programs to meet scholarly activity requirements.