Early Mentoring for Research and Academic Careers

Research stands at the foreground of modern advances in medicine. Doing clinical research helps you become a good clinician, and doing good clinical work in turn makes you a better researcher. Being a good researcher and being a good clinician, most of the times, has one thing in common, a good mentor. When student at some point in medical school contemplates a research rotation, and this first rendezvous with the processes and, more important, the people involved in the project, determines how much interest one generates to carry forward in their medical career. This editorial focuses on the early mentoring for research and academic careers.

Impact of a Dedicated Research Rotation during Ophthalmology Residency

Background The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) requires that ophthalmology residents participate in scholarly activity during residency. However, residents lack protected time for research. Objective This article aims to determine the impact of a dedicated research rotation on scholarly productivity and research experience during residency. Methods This cohort study compared two groups of ophthalmology residents. Residents who graduated between 2004 and 2009 did not have dedicated research time and served as control residents (CR), while residents who graduated between 2010 and 2015 had a dedicated research rotation and served as the intervention group (research residents, RR). Primary outcomes included publications and presentations recorded over a 4-year period, spanning the 3 years of residency and the first year after graduation. These were analyzed by linear regression and t-tests. Residents also took surveys regarding research experience and chi-squared tests and logistic regression were used to compare these results. Results The RR had 0.97 more publications and 1.3 more presentations compared with the CR after adjusting for PhD status, pre-residency publications and presentations, age at graduation, gender, and race (p = 0.09 and p = 0.02, respectively). RR had higher odds of reporting adequate time to complete research (odds ratio [OR] = 13.11, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 3.58–48.03, p < 0.001) and satisfaction with their research experience (OR = 6.96, 95% CI = 2.104–23.053, p = 0.002). Conclusion Residents with a research rotation had more time to complete research, were more satisfied with their research experience, and generated more publications and presentations compared with residents without the research rotation. A research rotation can help meet ACGME requirements and help residents achieve greater scholarly activity.