TY - JOUR
T1 - Implementation of a shared research database to increase medical student awareness and involvement in urology research
T2 - A pilot study
AU - Babar, Mustufa
AU - Loloi, Justin
AU - Labagnara, Kevin
AU - Watts, Kara L.
AU - Laudano, Melissa
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Canadian Urological Association.
PY - 2024/1
Y1 - 2024/1
N2 - Introduction: We aimed to assess the effect of a shared institutional research database on medical students’ scholarly work, perceived research competency, and self-reported satisfaction. Methods: An institutional inventory database was created on Google Sheets with a listing of available mentors and a description of their ongoing research projects. The inventory database was shared with interested students and faculty. Students who agreed to participate were surveyed pre- and post-inventory. Survey questions assessed student demographics, prior research experience, and their perception of research competency and satisfaction. The number of presentations, publications, and articles pre- and post-inventory were also abstracted. Survey responses were compared using the Mann-Whitney U test. Results: A total of 20 students were surveyed pre-inventory and at a median followup of six months (5–7) post-inventory. There was a significant increase in scholarly presentations and publications post-inventory (p<0.05 for all). Furthermore, post-inventory, students reported feeling more confident in establishing an academic career, finding good mentors, managing their relationship with their mentor, managing professional challenges, and effectively showcasing themselves professionally and describing their research (p<0.05 for all). More than 65% of students agreed or strongly agreed that the database was easy to use, accessible, transparent, and would like a similar database created for other specialty departments. Conclusions: After performing mentorship-guided research through an institutional research database, medical students felt more confident in their ability to perform research and produced more scholarly work. Therefore, we recommend a research database be created across all institutional departments to foster interest in conducting research.
AB - Introduction: We aimed to assess the effect of a shared institutional research database on medical students’ scholarly work, perceived research competency, and self-reported satisfaction. Methods: An institutional inventory database was created on Google Sheets with a listing of available mentors and a description of their ongoing research projects. The inventory database was shared with interested students and faculty. Students who agreed to participate were surveyed pre- and post-inventory. Survey questions assessed student demographics, prior research experience, and their perception of research competency and satisfaction. The number of presentations, publications, and articles pre- and post-inventory were also abstracted. Survey responses were compared using the Mann-Whitney U test. Results: A total of 20 students were surveyed pre-inventory and at a median followup of six months (5–7) post-inventory. There was a significant increase in scholarly presentations and publications post-inventory (p<0.05 for all). Furthermore, post-inventory, students reported feeling more confident in establishing an academic career, finding good mentors, managing their relationship with their mentor, managing professional challenges, and effectively showcasing themselves professionally and describing their research (p<0.05 for all). More than 65% of students agreed or strongly agreed that the database was easy to use, accessible, transparent, and would like a similar database created for other specialty departments. Conclusions: After performing mentorship-guided research through an institutional research database, medical students felt more confident in their ability to perform research and produced more scholarly work. Therefore, we recommend a research database be created across all institutional departments to foster interest in conducting research.
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U2 - 10.5489/cuaj.8468
DO - 10.5489/cuaj.8468
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85175056446
SN - 1911-6470
VL - 18
JO - Journal of the Canadian Urological Association
JF - Journal of the Canadian Urological Association
IS - 1
ER -