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. 2021 Mar 9;5(3):e10585.
doi: 10.1002/aet2.10585. eCollection 2021 Jul.

Research environment and resources to support pediatric emergency medicine fellow research

Angelica W DesPain  1 , Colleen K Gutman  2 , Andrea T Cruz  3 , Paul L Aronson  4 , James M Chamberlain  1 , Todd P Chang  5 , Todd A Florin  6 , Ron L Kaplan  7 , Lise E Nigrovic  8 , Christopher M Pruitt  9 , Amy D Thompson  10 , Victor M Gonzalez  11 , Rakesh D Mistry  12
Affiliations

Research environment and resources to support pediatric emergency medicine fellow research

Angelica W DesPain et al. AEM Educ Train. .

Abstract

Background: There is a need for pediatric emergency medicine (PEM) researchers, but the current state of PEM fellow research training is not well described. We sought to (1) describe resources and gaps in PEM fellowship research training and (2) assess agreement between fellow and program director (PD) perceptions of these in fellow research experience.

Methods: Surveys were distributed electronically to U.S. PEM fellows and PDs from March to April 2020. Fellows and PDs were queried on program research infrastructure and current gaps in fellow research experience. For programs that had at least one fellow and PD response, each fellow response was compared to their PD's corresponding response (reference standard). For each binary survey item, we determined the percent of responses with agreement between the fellow and PD.

Results: Of 79 fellowship programs, 70 (89%) were represented with at least one response, including responses from 59 PDs (75%) and 218 fellows (39% of all fellows, representing 80% of programs). Fellows and PDs identified mentorship and faculty engagement as the most important needs for successful fellowship research; for every one fellow there was a median of 0.8 potential faculty mentors in the division. Twenty percent of fellows were not satisfied with mentorship opportunities. There was no association between fellow career research intent (high, defined as ≥20% dedicated time, or low) with current year of training (p = 0.88), program size (p = 0.67), and area of research focus (p = 0.40). Fellows were often unaware of research being performed by division faculty.

Conclusion: PEM fellows were not consistently aware of resources available to support research training. To better support PEM fellows' research training, many programs may need to expand mentorship and increase fellows' awareness of local and external resources and opportunities.

Keywords: fellowship; mentorship; pediatric emergency medicine; research.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no potential conflicts to disclose.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Violin plot of fellow career research intent (high vs. low) according to fellowship program size. There is no significant difference between program size and fellow career research intent (p = 0.67; median value denoted by dark black bar). The width of the plot demonstrates distribution of program size
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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