OB/GYN Resident Research Curriciulum: A Critical Review

Introduction: Over the past two decades, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and the Residency Review Committee included a focus on training OB/GYN resident physicians with the knowledge of research principles and methodology. OB/GYN Residency Programs complied with these requirements with curriculum innovations. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the medical literature since 2000, from the perspective of a Resident (Research) Program Director, and identify areas of successful curricular innovation and opportunities, in order to augment current resident research programs. Methods: This article examines Residency Research Curricula in North America with a critical review of the literature. PubMed, MeSH, Medline, and Web of science were searched for English language abstracts pertaining to this topic, and found 471 abstracts. Twenty original pertinent articles were found. Cross-referencing provided an additional 4 articles. Results: Themes from this literature review of 24 scientific, published articles include a nearuniversal adoption of a resident research project requirement for OB/GYN resident programs (99%), as Program Directors understood the importance of research training for future attending physicians. Many successful OB/GYN Resident Research Programs have faculty mentors, a structured resident research curriculum that includes study design and analysis, protected resident research time, research funding, and a Resident Research Program Director. A disconnect was seen in lack of research curriculum structure (over half of all programs), resident knowledge, and resident attitudes to research. Many innovations attempt to overcome these attitudinal and curricular barriers, however rigorous scientific methods have not been used to fully evaluate these changes, thus preventing meta-analysis. Conclusion: While critical curricular infrastructure has been established in many OB/GYN residency programs and many challenges have been recognized, these innovations have not yet been scientifically evaluated in a manner that allows for best practices to be recommended.