Cross-sectional analysis of psychiatry residency graduate peer-reviewed publication trends

Abstract

Background: Scholarly activity through research is widely considered to be an integral component of medical training, and residency or fellowship match success. However, the rate of these scholarly practices in psychiatry residency graduates is relatively unknown. Here, we aim to (1) describe factors associated with scholarly research activities, as measured by peer-reviewed publications, among psychiatry residency graduates, and (2) determine if an association exists between publication rates before, during, or after psychiatry residency.

Methods: We employed a cross-sectional study design analyzing research output by psychiatry residency graduates in relation to future publications and academic accomplishments from a random sample of 50 psychiatry residency rosters. Data were extracted for each graduate and analyzed using STATA 15.1 and Microsoft Excel. A protocol is publicly available here: https://osf.io/pwa6d/.

Results: We identified 249 residency programs of which we randomly sampled 50. Among the 50 programs, 7 were included, totaling 122 graduates from psychiatry residencies to be analyzed. Of the 122 graduated residents, 57% (69) produced no publications. Of the graduates who pursued a fellowship, 25.4% (31/67) entered into Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. Of the 53 published graduates, most of their publications were received before residency, making up 68 of the 183 publications (37.2%). Compared to before residency, the total number of publications during residency reduced by 29.4% (20/68).

Conclusion: While a majority of psychiatry graduate's publications were pre-residency, many publications occurred post- residency and the average number of publications was lowest during residency training.