Resident Self-Efficacy in Grantsmanship Lags Behind Key Funding Deadlines

Extramural funding is critical to career success and advancement in academic surgery, and surgical residents can apply for both societal and federal funding. Many federal funding mechanisms require proposals to be submitted before residents' formal research years.

To better understand the resident experience with grantsmanship, we distributed a validated grantsmanship self-efficacy assessment inventory for voluntary completion at our academic general surgery training program with 2 years of dedicated research. The survey covers 3 domains: conceptualizing, designing and analyzing, and funding a study. All questions are scored 0 to 10 with 0 indicating no confidence and 10 indicating complete confidence. Median scores for the 3 domains were calculated for all respondents and compared between training years using Kruskal-Wallis with post-hoc Dunn testing.

Forty-four surveys were completed with a response rate of 84%. Resident self-efficacy in grantsmanship improved throughout the training years with the greatest changes being in their comfort with conceptualizing and funding a study. Dunn testing identified specific differences between PGY2 and PGY7 comfort with conceptualizing studies (median 5 vs. 7.5, p = 0.003) and understanding of funding mechanisms (median 2.0 vs. 7, p = 0.003).

While comfort with conceptualizing and funding studies does increase throughout the training years, this often develops after critical funding deadlines have already passed and can disadvantage surgical residents interested in academic careers. A curriculum that emphasizes familiarity with the grant writing and funding processes may better facilitate long term career success.