It’s difficult enough to be accepted to a good medical school, to succeed in one’s studies and to graduate. But women who accomplish this find it more difficult than their male counterparts as they shoulder the bigger burden in raising their families. 

A new study conducted at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Beersheba has found a direct connection between the date of medical students’ first academic publication and their future professional success. As it takes longer for female graduates to publish, they are handicapped later in becoming senior physicians in hospitals, medical schools and other institutions. 

Many medical schools and residency programs incorporate research projects into their curriculum, however most remain unpublished. Little is known on the long-term effect of early-career publication, especially in female graduates.

The aim of the study was to examine the effect of publishing the dissertation of the male and female students within two years of graduation on their professional future as male and female doctors.

Published in the BMC Medical Education journal, it was entitled “The impact of gender on early scientific publication and long-term career advancement in Israeli medical school graduates.” 

The sample included 556 graduates of BGU’s Goldman School of Medicine who graduated between 1993-2003 and received a license to practice medicine in Israel. As part of the studies for a degree, students are required to carry out research work under the guidance of the faculty. The experience can be in any field of science ranging from basic research through clinical research and epidemiological or qualitative work. 

The work is carried out in parallel with the clinical experience in the advanced years of medical studies, at the end of which the students must submit the work for evaluation by an internal committee or alternatively publish in a reputable scientific journal. The sample was chosen from these years because it represents physicians who are currently at the peak of their careers. It is worth noting that all medical schools in Israel require a research thesis of in order to graduate. 

The study was conducted by Dr. Limor Yamit Tebo, a BGU medical school graduate, under the supervision of Dr. Lior Nesher, Prof. Dan Greenberg, Prof. Yosef Habib and Prof. Klarice Riesenberg, faculty members of the Faculty of Health Sciences. 

The findings show that those who published earlier were credited with successes in academia and practice, in addition to reaching senior management positions 15 to 20 years later. The study collected information on the graduates’ publications – when they were completed, the classification of the journal in which they appeared, what they specialized in and their professional resumes.

The rate of first and last authors of the journal papers (these are regarded as doing the most work on them) was significantly higher among men compared to women (58.7% vs. 42.4%). Also, managerial roles were more common among male physicians versus women doctors (28.4% vs. 14.6%). Moreover, 90.3% of the women who were in a managerial position published a similar number of academic articles as did their male counterparts.

One of the main conclusions of the study is that it is necessary to identify barriers that inhibit early publication in medical journals, especially among female students, and to build programs to encourage early publication. According to the researchers, the academic institutions should allocate resources, especially in the time and effort of the faculty members, to accompany the female and male students at the beginning of their journey and help them publish a research project during medical studies or immediately after graduation

They found that surgical specialties publish more and earlier than non-surgical specialties. Medical schools and residencies should create tailored programs to support and encourage early publications, especially by women and in non-surgical specialties, the authors urged.

An educational institution that will strive to identify factors causing the gap among the genders of medical students in early years may bring about a change in the existing reality. declared Tebo.

According to the researchers, a successful publication of the initial research project at the beginning of the doctor’s career is probably a springboard that affects future academic and managerial positions. Although only half of first- and second-year medical students believe that ongoing academic research will be valuable to them, studies suggests that early publication may contribute to their research and academic careers even in the absence of an academic career.

 “We have no doubt that there is a strong link between research and medicine and we show that there is a correlation between early academic success and future professional success in the clinical world,” said Nesher. 

The discrepancies between female and male researchers are well known and are apparent in almost every step of the career of scientists. It has been well described that there is a glass ceiling and gender bias on advancement of women into leadership positions in academic medicine despite no visible barriers. This gap continues despite demographic changes in the trends of the medical workforce, as women outnumber the number of men in many medical schools. As the evidence on the relationship between early publication in journals and advancement in medical careers. 

In some countries, such as the US and Germany, physicians can practice medicine without completing a research thesis during their medical school training – so the benefit of completing a medical thesis is more evident for graduates who are pursuing an academic career of teaching in medical school. However, in many countries, as in Israel, performing an original research project is an integral component of medical students’ education and a formal pre-requisite for obtaining a medical doctor (MD) degree as well as part of residency training.

Medical students generally perceive their early research exposure, regardless of whether it is mandatory or an elective process, as a stimulating experience that sparks their research interest and assists in developing scholarly research abilities, but in recent years, there has been a decline in the number of physician-investigators, they concluded. Despite this decline, there is no uniform strategy within the medical education discipline on how to encourage physicians in training to perform and publish their research. Therefore, more intensive strategies to encourage young physicians to perform clinical research may be needed, the authors wrote.