Dedicated Residency Research Time and Its Relationship to Urologic Career Academic Success

To explore the relationship between research time during urologic training and career academic success.

We included urologists graduating residency between 2002 and 2008 from 36 programs affiliated with a top 50 hospital for urology as ranked by the United States News and World Report, and collected research time during residency, fellowship training, current appointment (private practice, assistant professor, associate professor, professor, chair), national institutes of health (NIH) grant accrual, NIH R01 grant accrual, and current H-index in Scopus database. Publication output during and after residency was identified through the PubMed database.

In our cohort of 543 urologists, 66.3% of graduating trainees pursued private practice. Increasing residency research time was associated with increased publication count (P <.001), pursuit of professor positions (P <.001), and NIH funding (P <.001). One year of dedicated research increased the odds of being in the top 10th percentile of publication output during residency (odds ratio [OR]: 5.7, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 2.7-12.1), pursuing a fellowship (OR: 2.0, 95% CI: 1.3-3.1), promotion to professor (OR: 4.9, 95% CI: 2.0-12.2), obtaining a NIH grant (OR: 6.2, 95% CI: 2.3-16.5), and decreased the odds of pursuing private practice (OR: 0.4, 95% CI: 0.3-0.6). As amount of time dedicated to research in urologic residency increased from 3-4 to 6-12 months, OR increased for career academic success metrics.

Although a minority of trainees enter academics, dedicated time for research in urologic residency is associated with career academic success, with more research time associated with increased publication output, academic appointments, and grant funding.