Introduction

In recent years there has been a well documented decline in the numbers of trainees pursuing academic medicine within the United Kingdom, giving increasing cause for concern. Over the same time period medical research has increasingly moved towards evidenced-based practice. Central initiatives, led by the 2005 Walport report, have attempted to redefine academic medical pathways and support those pursuing such careers.

There is a strong need for future clinicians to be skilled in interpreting and analysing research. Given that those pursuing academic careers in medicine will now be represented by a smaller, well defined group, it has been suggested that a greater role could be taken by medical school curricular in developing medical student knowledge and interest in research methodology.

In this study we examined the perceptions of research opportunities amongst newly qualified doctors graduating from a large UK medical school. Our hypothesis was that medical students would be interested in further opportunities to develop research experience. We aim to describe responses together with presenting to typical research experiences gained by medical students pursuing a standard university medical school course.

Methods

We approached newly qualified doctors graduating from a University medical school and invited them to participate. A 60-item questionnaire consisting of free text and 5-point Likert scale was distributed investing attitudes towards research and current experience in this area. The results were collated and analysed in SPSS v15.

Results

We received 100 completed questionnaires from 318 doctors invited to complete the survey. Of these 59% were female, 41% male, reflecting the gender breakdown of the medical school. 85% agreed with the statement that research and/or audit experience was useful for medical students. However, only 36% agreed that this research experience should influence selection for training jobs. 71% of respondents expressed interest in undertaking extracurricular research during their time at medical school, although only 57% had actively approached medical staff about undertaking this. The reasons for this undertaking this were predominantly curriculum vitae driven, with 47% expressing an interest in undertaking this to make their CV more appealing. Overall students were neutral as to whether they had received adequate research opportunities. The median number of projects undertaken was 1, and 70% of these were supervised by Consultant staff. Medicine, surgery and paediatrics were the most popular specialities to undertake this. Only a small proportion of these projects culminated in presented or published research projects.

Conclusions

Newly qualified doctors are generally enthusiastic about undertaking research during their time at medical school. However, the driving factors behind this appear to be more CV motivated than research-interest driven. These results suggest that there is scope for increasing the formal teaching of research methodology together with providing students with further opportunities to engage in clinical research at University.