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Building a bright future: discussing the weighting of academic research in standardized curriculum vitae for Australian Medical and Surgical Specialty Training College entrance

ANZ Journal of Surgery2023Vol. 93(7-8), pp. 1744–1753

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Thomas Muecke, Stephen Bacchi, Robert J. Casson, Weng Onn Chan

Abstract

Entrance into specialist medical and surgical training programmes in Australia is a challenging prospect for trainee medical officers (TMO). Whilst entrance requirements differ between each training program,1 acquisition of certain clinical skills, research publications, higher degrees and regional exposure are often paramount. These criteria are typically reflected in the curriculum vitae (CV), which provides the assessor an initial snapshot of the applicant's professional career. As the number of medical school graduates continues to grow without the equivalent expansion of postgraduate positions, a competitive CV is often required for successful entry into vocational training.1, 2 Standardized criteria are utilized by certain training programmes and provide a quantification of the weighting of different aspects of a given CV. Accordingly, applicants may direct their time and activities towards activities that are endorsed by these CV criteria. Clinical research (including publications, presentations, and higher degrees) is a vital component of advancing the care of our patients. Including research as a component in specialty training program entrance criteria may facilitate selection of individuals who are likely to continue contributing academically. The extent to which research is weighted in CV criteria may vary between specialty training programmes. In this article, we present the proportion of specialty training programmes that have publicly available explicit criteria point allocations regarding CV content (a standardized CV), as well as the percentage of points in the available standardized CVs dedicated to research. Clinical research is one of other vocations that reflects a TMO's involvement in evidence-based medicine,2 and as such, often is a key criterion for specialty college training program applications.3 The desire for TMO's to partake in clinical research, which may be motivated by specialty college CV requirements, is described in several studies.2, 4-6 O'Sullivan et al. reports that TMO's target research publications to improve their CV.5 Furthermore, Funston et al. reported that 96.6% of 1625 medical students from 38 countries reported they would want to be involved in research after graduation.6 Similarly, previous studies of TMO's have found that 98.4% were interested in doing research in the future, with two of the three main motivators being a perceived CV improvement and pre-requisite for specialty training.4 The weightings of research in standardized CVs, however, differ between Australian and New Zealand specialty colleges. McGrail et al. reports that 60% of 11 263 Australian TMO's believe that clinical research is important to either progress their training or career.2 Within this group, 91% of metropolitan and 87% of rural surgical TMOs share this belief when compared to 74% metropolitan and 63% rural internal medicine TMOs. A higher agreeance on the importance of research may reflect their desired college having more competitive research entry criteria and expectations.2 We found that 14/47 (29.8%) specialty medical and surgical training programmes in Australia and New Zealand publish publicly available standardized CVs, and of these 14/14 (100%) allocate points towards research, with a mean point weighting towards research of 42.5% (median: 45.5%; range: 5%–61.9%). Allocation of points dedicated to research are presented in Table A1 and the breakdown of point allocation for research and higher degrees is described in Table A2. Our findings demonstrate that, evidently for the 14 specialty training programmes with publicly available standardized CVs, involvement in research is a valuable and desired attribute of training program applicants. Standardized CVs are more common in surgical specialties, (e.g., RACS, RANZCO, and RANZCOG) which constitutes 12/14 (85.7%) specialty training programmes identified with publicly available standardized CVs. Comparatively, for physician training programmes (RACP), 1/26 (3.85%) published a publicly available standardized CV. Interestingly, 10/14 (71.4%) specialty training programmes awarded greater weighting to research than for clinical experience in that specialty. This finding, however, may reflect the structure of the specialty training program, as for surgical specialties, surgical skills and techniques and typically learnt during vocational training. A standardized CV allows for applicants to be evaluated and compared in a standardized and transparent manner. Incentivizing and highlighting the importance of research in this manner may facilitate the generation of new knowledge to improve medical practice. However, heavily weighting research as a CV criterion may have limitations. While applicants strive towards obtaining a competitive application, some individuals may approach acquiring research points with a ‘box-ticking’ mentality. Conversely, availability of and involvement in research projects is not uniform for medical students and TMOs, including those in rural positions or outside of academic centres, disadvantaging some groups of future specialty training applicants. Research opportunities may be increased through equal opportunity for placements at academic hospitals, or through compulsory research involvement within an undergraduate medical degree. Furthermore, research mentors and supervisors may be incentivized to undertake research projects with diverse teams of varying experience. The presented findings are observational in nature. The effect of including research as a component in standardized CVs on the continued participation of registrars and specialty trained doctors in clinical research has not been demonstrated. It should also be noted that standardized CVs, including the weighting of research, change over time. Individuals may be negatively impacted after criteria shift from and misalign with an individual's prior efforts towards building a competitive CV. Future work could obtain qualitative insights into the process of producing and updating standardized CVs. Additionally, the effect of disparate research availability and opportunities for Australian medical student and TMO's, as well as the impact of research mentorship, on an applicant's admission into their desired specialty training program, could be explored. The evaluation of the future impact of the research cited in CVs may also be valuable. Additionally, selection guidelines during later sections of the selection process, including interviews and situational judgement tests, are not publicly available to applicants. The effects of potential conflicts of interest during this phase, manifesting as applicant selection bias, remain largely unknown. Thomas Muecke: Data curation; writing – original draft; writing – review and editing. Stephen Bacchi: Conceptualization; supervision; writing – review and editing. Robert Casson: Supervision; writing – review and editing. Weng Onn Chan: Conceptualization; supervision; writing – review and editing. Indigenous identity: 7 points Regional origin and experience: 7 points Academic awards and excellence: 7 points Qualifications: 7 points Continuing professional development and courses: 4 points Relevant personal experiences: 7 points Indigenous identity: 10 points Regional clinical exposure: 5 points Within O&G: 12 points Within O&G in a rural location: 3 points Outside of O&G: 3 points Academic (excellence and awards): 8 points Professional qualifications and courses: 5 points Outstanding leadership and altruism: 11 points Research and higher degrees: 4 points Presentations/posters: 1 point Grants and scholarships: 1 point Academic performance: 2 points Other attributes (scholarships, sporting representations, music and art achievements, charity involvements): 4 points Neurology elective year: 2 points Neurology residency experience (any): 1 point Completing medical degree: 2 points Internship + 3 years of general medical training: 4 points Passed both components of the FRACP exam: 4 points B Med Sci or other post grad degree: 2 points Significant involvement in hospital committees, resident association: 2 points Significant teaching achievements: 2 points Non–medical activities that show leadership, application, determination, personal sacrifice, or voluntary activities for common good: 2 points One or more prize during medical course or training: 1 point Publications: 10 points Presentations: 10 points Cardiothoracics experience: 6 points Surgical experience other than cardiothoracics: 3 points Non–surgical rotations: 3 points Skills courses: 5 points Medical awards/achievements: 2 points Publications: 5 points Presentations: 3 points Prizes/awards for excellence: 2 points Scholarships and teaching: 3 points Qualifications: 4 points Publications: 2 points Presentations: 1 point Neurosurgery experience: 4 points ICU experience: 1 point Presentations: 2 points Publications: 4 points Orthopaedics experience: 3 points Clinical experience other than orthopaedics: 1 point Publications: 5 points Presentations: 3 points Otolaryngology head and neck experience: 4 points Surgical experience other than otolaryngology head and neck: 2 points Publications: 3 points Presentations: 2 points Courses and scientific meetings: 2 points Awards and scholarships: 2 points Special achievements and leadership: 2 points Professional development activities (medical/technical): 15 points Professional development activities (non–medical/non–technical): 10 points Prizes, awards, and leadership: 15 points Publications: 8 points Presentations: 8 points RACS skills courses: currently suspended due to covid Teaching: 2 points Professional development: 10 points Achievements, leadership, and management: 5 points Cultural competence and cultural safety: 3 points Article or textbook chapter: 2 points Opinion/non–research publication: 0.5 Competition and presentation of audit: 1 point Full time research position: 2 points per year Part time research position: 1 point per year Development of a substantial education resource: 2 points Co–investigator in a clinical trial: 2 points One publication: 1 point Two or more publications: 2 points JIF>4: 2 points JIF 10 authors: 0.5 points (maximum of 1 point) Presentation: 1 point Poster (applicant must be first author): 0.5 point Presentation: 0.5 point Poster (applicant must be first author): 0.5 point By dissertation: 3 points By coursework: 2 points

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