13 March 2023

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A snapshot on oral and maxillofacial surgery resident scholarly activity: Can we do better?

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Background

The Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA) requires oral and maxillofacial surgery (OMS) residents to engage in scholarly activity. Currently, it is unknown how this mandate translates into research output.

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to quantify the research output of oral and maxillofacial surgery (OMS) residents. In addition, researchers sought to identify characteristics associated with resident productivity. The research team included clinician scholars from University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine, UT Southwestern/Parkland Memorial Hospital and New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University. The study was published March 7, 2023, in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. 

Study design

This was a cross-sectional study of all OMS residents during the 2021-2022 academic year. Attempts were made to obtain resident rosters from every CODA-accredited OMS program. Resident names were searched in PubMed (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) to identify peer-reviewed publications. Post graduate year (PGY), program name and total publication count during residency were recorded for each resident. Academic status and fellowship-affiliation of the residency program were also included.

The primary predictor was the PGY level of each resident.

Main outcome variable

The main outcome variable was the publication count of each resident.

Covariates

The covariates were the academic status and the fellowship-affiliation of the residency program.

Analysis

The research team conducted simple bivariate comparisons using Wilcoxon signed-rank tests.

Results

Complete resident rosters were identified for 87 residency programs. 1,132 residents were queried, and a total of 548 peer-reviewed publications were identified. There was a mean of 6.30 publications per program and 0.43 publications per resident. Over half of all residents had no identifiable publication. PGY5 residents averaged the most publications per resident (1.45) followed by PGY6 (1.04) and PGY4 (0.63). Academic programs had significantly more publications per resident than non-academic programs (median of 3.00 vs 0.00, p=0.02). Programs with a fellowship-association also had more publications per resident (median of 5.00 vs 2.00, p<0.01).

Conclusion

Current CODA research requirements do not translate into resident publications. Publication counts appeared to slightly increase with PGY level, however OMS resident productivity still lags far behind that of other surgical subspecialties.

Ryan M. Nguyen, Michael J. Cimba, Kevin C. Lee, Neeraj Panchal and Thomas Schlieve. “A snapshot on oral and maxillofacial surgery (OMS) resident scholarly activity: can we do better?” Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. March 07, 2023. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joms.2023.02.017