Resident Scholarly Activity and Productivity Outcomes Before and After Implementing a Structured Research Program: A Before-After Study.

Objectives: Emergency medicine (EM) residency programs require participation in scholarly activity. In 2017, we launched a formal Resident Research Program (RRP) for physician residents in our 3-year accredited residency program. We aimed to measure the association between the implementation of the RRP and resident scholarly productivity. Methods: This analysis was a before-after study of residents in a Midwestern university-based EM residency program (7-10 per class) graduating between 2013 and 2023. The RRP was implemented in July 2017 and offered resources and requirements; our study compared outcomes before and after the launch of the program. We provided a dedicated training program study coordinator, 24-h in-house research assistants, faculty/research staff mentorship, and research funding. Residents were required to complete a hypothesis-driven research project and submit an abstract to a professional meeting or manuscript for publication. We tracked scholarly productivity per class, including publications, presentations, first-author manuscripts, and faculty publications with a resident. We measured the association between the RRP and scholarly productivity through univariate Poisson regression models to report the unadjusted rate ratio (RR) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI). Results: Ninety residents were included ( Conclusions: The implementation of a structured RRP was associated with increased resident scholarly productivity. The targeted research resources served as both a strategy to support resident research and enhance departmental academic engagement. Future research should examine the perceptions, quality, and impact of scholarly activity requirements on residents.