Follow-up of medical students’ research productivity and career preferences 2 years after a research project course.

Riitta Möller and Maria Shoshan have recently published a paper in BMC Medical Education: "Medical students’ research productivity and career preferences; a 2-year prospective follow-up study".

The article is a follow-up study of some 400 medical students 2 years after the mandatory research project course in the medical program at Karolinska Institutet. The study shows that approximately 15% of the students had co-authored a scientific paper which originated from the research projects and some 120 scientific manuscript had been sent in for publication. Furthermore, 9 % of the students hade been registered as doctoral students. The students who reported that they would in the coming 5 years prefer to work as clinicians only was significantly younger than those who envisaged participation in research. There were no significant gender differences.
The authors conclude that the results indicate that the project course had a positive impact on continued supervisor-student collaboration on a professional level, but also that strategies to encourage young doctors to perform clinical research may be needed.