Scholarly Activities Participation among Surgical Resident Doctors in Nigeria

Scholarly activity in various forms are academic deeds such as researches and research outputs in articles, oral presentations, publications and theses which are disseminated and peer- reviewed.

This study aims to assess the level of participation of residents in scholarly activities including their attendance of national and international conferences during residency training.

This was a descriptive cross-sectional study of 81 resident doctors in General and Orthopaedic surgery, who attended the revision courses organized by their Faculties. Self-administered structured questionnaires were used to collect data. Data obtained was analyzed using SPSS version 21.0.

The mean age of the respondents was 34.1 ± 4.5 years, and age ranged from 26 years to 48 years. The male: female ratio was 12.5:1. The average number of years of respondents in residency programme was 3.9 ± 1.8 years. 80.3% of the residents had participated in research since commencement of their residency. Only 18.5% of the resident doctors had any publications in a peer-reviewed journal. While 51.9% of residents had attended local and national conferences since the beginning of their training, only 17.3% had had oral and/or poster presentations at local conferences. No resident involved in this study had oral or poster presentation done at any of the international conferences attended, despite an attendance rate of 12.3%.

Resident doctors should be encouraged to participate in researches and to publish their works. They should also be encouraged to present their works at conferences.