Increasing Neurosurgical Resident Research Productivity Through Cultural Shift: Choosing Carrots Over Sticks

Introduction As part of the Milestones Initiative of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), residents in neurosurgery are expected to participate in either clinical research or basic science research. Therefore, each neurosurgical training program must offer the support and opportunity to achieve this goal. In 2012, a structured effort to promote a resident culture of research was introduced into the authors' neurosurgery residency training curriculum. This study reviews this experience over the last decade. Methods Data were collected from the authors' departmental neurosurgery website and Scopus to create a database of neurosurgical residents who graduated 10 years before and after 2012 and their publication output. Bibliometric measures were collected for all articles published by residents. Results were compared between residents who graduated before and after the introduction of the research initiative. Results A total of 127 publications were analyzed from 37 residents, constituting 174 authorships. There was a statistically significant increase in the number of publications per resident (P < 0.001), citation number per author (P = 0.002), and author h-index (P < 0.001) after implementing the initiative. There were no significant differences in the pre-residency and baseline demographic variables between the two groups. Conclusion This study relates the experience of initiating a research culture at the authors' neurosurgery training program, which did not emphasize scholarly productivity historically. The effort focused on creating a culture of curiosity as opposed to formal requirements. The results provided evidence that this strategy yielded a significant increase in academic output and impact. These findings have important implications for neurosurgical training programs.