Letter from the Editor-in-Chief - Medical Science Educator - LIMSC ...

with a higher impact factor, and published earlier intheir medical training than students prior to thischange.Current studies regarding student research arelimited by the lack of objective outcomes. 1,5,12 To ourknowledge, this is the first report documenting andquantifying the effect of a curricular revision onresearch productivity. 1 We believe that selectivesprovide medical students with an opportunity toengage with mentors early in their careers. Mayomedical students have employed this selective timeto engage with mentors, even those that did notchoose to do a formal research selective. Based onthese considerations, we propose thatimplementation of selectives has been effective inincreasing student research productivity.Medical student research has been shown toincrease critical thinking abilities, improve oral andwritten presentation skills, and enhance bothclassroom and clinical learning. 1 Research also hasbeen shown to influence choice of specialty and thedesire to pursue a career in academic medicine. 1,3Student research also increases students’ confidencein designing and conducting clinical research and inevaluating the clinical and scientific literature. 1,10Within the current study, we recognize severallimitations. All journal articles were searched forusing PubMed, rendering it likely that some paperspublished by Mayo medical students are notindexed in this database. Some of the journals werenot included in the Journal Citation Index, makingit impossible to obtain impact factors for allpublications. We also recognize that impact factorsare not the ultimate source of research quality. 20 Werecognize that the strong association reported herebetween selectives and research productivity doesnot prove causality. There certainly may beadditional factors that were not assessed in thisstudy that impacted medical student research, butwe note that student selection at the Mayo MedicalSchool has not changed during the study timeperiod, nor have the research requirements formatriculation.evaluation of the research. We would also like todetermine whether selectives will increase studentparticipation in research related to the science ofhealthcare delivery, quality, and systems-basedpractice, topics which have been accorded highpriority in medical education.ConclusionsFlexible time during the pre-clinical curriculum willpermit medical students to become engaged inresearch earlier in their medical education, whichwe have shown leads to more, higher qualitypublications during the medical school experience.Such research experiences will increase students’understanding of basic science and medicalconcepts, improve their oral and writtenpresentation skills, help them develop criticalthinking skills that will be important for clinicaldecision-making, help students more readily enteracademic medicine as a career, and help studentsestablish important mentoring relationships withestablished faculty. Our experience shows that welldirectedflexible time in the pre-clinical years willallow for these critical medical student researchexperiences.Key WordsPre-clinical; research; medical student; elective timeFurther studies are required to define the impact ofstudent research on specialty choice, on the decisionto pursue a career in academic medicine, and onfuture scholarship activity. Additional studies couldalso address the impact of selectives on otheraspects of medical education, including USMLEscores, clerkship grades, and clinical decisionmakingability. Other measures of research qualitycould also be addressed in the future, including thenumber of publication citations and expertMedical Science Educator © IAMSE 2013 Volume 23(1S) 96