Impact of Resources and Structure on Scholarly Productivity in Pediatric Critical Care Fellowship

Background: Pediatric critical care medicine (PCCM) fellowship structures vary widely among programs and have not been examined since 2006. The development of scholarly knowledge and skills is an important part of fellowship training. However, the optimal PCCM fellowship structure to enable fellows' scholarly productivity is unknown. Objective: We examined PCCM fellowship time structure and resources to better understand their association with scholarly productivity. Methods: This is a secondary analysis of cross-sectional survey data from PCCM fellowship program directors. We defined highly productive programs as those in which greater than 75% of fellows published papers from their scholarly projects in the previous 5 years. Analyses investigated the association of scholarly productivity with dedicated scholarship time and program resources and barriers. Results: Forty-nine of 65 PCCM fellowships (75%) completed the survey. Only 20% of fellowships reported that greater than 75% of fellows published papers from their scholarly projects. Median total scholarly activity time was 16 months (interquartile range, 10-18 mo). The total amount of time devoted to scholarly activity was not associated with highly productive programs. Among resources and barriers, only T32 training grants were associated with highly productive programs. Conclusion: We found no relationship between time allocated to scholarly activity and high scholarly productivity in PCCM fellowships. Hence, programs that wish to increase fellows' scholarly productivity should not rely solely on providing more time for scholarly activity. Aside from T32 training grants, no specific resource or barrier that we evaluated is related to productivity.