Introduction: Scholarly activity during Neurosurgery training stands as a cornerstone of neurosurgical training and in ACGME core competencies, yet without firm guidelines regarding research support or infrastructure, the support systems for trainee’s research are highly variable. Our study explores resource-related factors associated with neurosurgery trainee scholarly activity in highly cited journals.
Methods: A list of 2022 neurosurgery residency programs were obtained from Neurosurgery Residency Review Committee. Using Scopus, affiliated hospital websites, and NIH RePORT, we collected publication data from 2020 to 2022, average faculty size and NIH funding per neurosurgery department for 2022. Programs were divided into small (1-1.5/year), mid-size (2-2.5/year), and large (≥ 3/year) based on resident numbers in each program.
Results: Of the 117 neurosurgery programs included, 30 (25.64%) were small, 44 (37.6%) were mid-sized, and 43 (36.7%) were large. The average number of publications was 42.79 for small, 55.05 for mid-sized, and 162.95 for large programs. Small programs had a resident-to-publication of 6.11 (range = 61.71) not significantly different from mid-sized programs (4.16, range = 23.14, p = 0.652) but significantly different from large programs (7.38, range = 31.67, p = 0.012). Additionally, our results also showed that small programs received an average of $0.047 (range = $0.684) million in NIH funding in 2022, medium programs received an average of $0.931 (range = $8.780) million, and large programs received an average of $4.931 (range = $28.859) million. Significant differences in funding were found between the program sizes: small vs medium (p = 0.012), medium vs large (p < 0.001), and small vs large (p < 0.001). Finally, there was no significant correlation between amount of funding and resident-to-publication ratio (R = + 0.197).
Conclusion : Our findings underscore significant disparities in publication rates and NIH funding among neurosurgery programs of varying sizes, with large programs received more funding and published more frequently in major journals than small and mid-sized programs.
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