Australian specialist trainees frequently view their mandatory fellowship research projects as lacking in value and taking valuable time away from their clinical and study commitments, a study has concluded.
The findings raise questions over the value of colleges requiring every trainee to undertake such work, which can ultimately lead to large numbers of ‘tick box’ projects and research waste, the authors say.
Some 372 current and recently qualified medical specialty trainees took part in the study, which included an online survey and quality assessment of their research output.
Among respondents, 86% were required to complete one or more projects as part of their training, with only 44% of those who answered the relevant question reporting being satisfied with their research experience.
On the other hand, slightly more than half (53%) supported mandatory projects and roughly the same proportion felt research was important for career development.
But while many agreed research was important for skills development, more than a quarter felt the “hundreds of hours” spent on research projects was unreasonable given clinical workloads and other priorities.
“I feel the requirement to carry out compulsory, time-consuming research unpaid and with no allocated time whilst working more than full time and completing other training requirements and attending to family etc is unethical and needs to be reconsidered by all colleges,” said one.
“It’s a great idea, but as a trainee, I am tired of being forced to spend my spare time outside of work (when I should be relaxing/having a family/doing hobbies) devoted to mandatory training that is not supported by the college. We are stuck doing boring projects… on our own time, and end up with the worst of both worlds,” said another.
One-fifth of trainees felt mandatory projects contributed to poor quality research, and almost one in six suggested they were “a waste of time” and not relevant to their career objectives.
“Most of the “research” done as compulsory research for training isn’t proper research, contributes little if anything to the field and doesn’t teach the person doing it anything about real research (I say this having done proper research prior to medicine),” said one respondent.
Some trainees said it was difficult to complete a research project when the requirements of training meant short contracts and constantly moving hospitals and states.