Stony Brook Pediatric Resident Scholarly Activity Program

In an effort to meet the varying scholarly activity interests, needs, and capabilities of individual residents, scholarly projects may involve any of the following areas:

  • basic or clinical research
  • translational research
  • health services
  • quality improvement
  • bioethics
  • education
  • public policy
  • epidemiological studies
  • case series,
  • Quality improvement (QI) projects of the scope that merits publication will count towards resident scholarly activity. However, if the QI projects apply only to local practices and cannot be generalized and published they could not count as resident scholarly activity.
  • In addition, examples of acceptable activities might include a critical meta-analysis of the literature, a systematic review of clinical practice, a critical analysis of public policy, or a curriculum development project with an assessment component.

During residency, all trainees will complete their CITI training and receive specific education in research and quality improvement methodology, project development and data management.

The structure in place for this program is:

1) “Research Fair” established for PGY-1 residents and is designed to introduce research opportunities within the department.This informal session will take place in the Fall of PGY-1 training and will serve as an open forum where residents will be able to interact with faculty and discuss possible research interests/topics. It is our goal that this session will familiarizethePGY-1 residents with faculty interests and stimulate them to think about their own research questions.

2) “Mentor-Mentee Match” by December of PGY-1 training level.Residents who do not yet have a mentor selected will be asked to provide a ranking list of potential mentors and associated projects.Mentors will submit alist of available projects and residents they would like to mentor. The results of the match will be announced by the end of January.

3) “Step One” is a written declaration submitted by the resident to the Research Directorlisting their research topic selection, and is due in the winter of their first year (by March 21st). This declaration should be endorsed by the chosen mentor who from then on assumes responsibility for mentoring the resident. By that time it is expected that residents would haveformulated a research question, searched for the best evidence in the literature, and critically appraisedthe existing evidence, and discussed all those steps with theirmentor.

4) “Step Two” is a written narrative by the resident, with guidance by the mentor, describing the project plan in details, according to the IRB-based outline (attached) which will be evaluated by their peers (senior and junior faculty members). The peer review process will provide formal opinion about the project to the authors and will strengthen the IRB application/or research process. This step is due by the beginning of PGY2 year.

5) “Work in Progress (WIP)” Residents will give brief periodic updates (power point) to their peers, mentors and faculty and receive feedback and assistance with their project execution that may involve the IRB application, data collection, data analysis, etc. These updates will be scheduled by the Resident Research Director.

6) “Final Step” is the presentation of the “final” scholarly activity product in the form of oral and/or poster presentation at Pediatrics Research Day. In addition, it is expected that all residents will submit their work to a local/ regional/national meeting, or participate in a manuscript submission.

Important Dates/Deadlines:

“Research Fair”- October of PGY1

“Mentor-Mentee Match”- January of PGY1

“Step One” –March 21st of PGY1

“Step Two” – 1st 3 months of PGY2

“Final Step” – May of PGY 2 and/or PGY3

Other Important Notes:

Resident Advisor is different than their Research Mentor (see below)

Mentor-Mentee: all prospective mentors list with their active IRB projects, publications and current funding are on file at the Department and available to all residents at any time. In general mentors are advised to avoid having more than two mentees unless they can fulfill their obligations of effective mentoring, as it is recognized that some mentors may have more mentees and have more projects than others, and that some projects are more complex than others. All mentors are encouraged to share their mentoring experience with all faculty during the research or WIP meetings.

Project/research sharing:the project and authorship sharing could be allowed as long as residents formulate different research questions, and contribute equally in the project that shares common database/methods, etc. Those projects that address multiple questions on the same topic typically could be pulled into one manuscript with co-authorship.

Resident Advisor:All residents will select an advisorat the beginning of their first year who is different than their Research Mentor. The Advisor role is more of “person to go to”, to discuss anything, career choices, research mentor choices, peers interactions, evaluations, etc.(see advisor documentation) Resident Advisors will be informed about the progress of Resident Scholarly Activities by both Resident Research Director and the resident.

Research Curriculum Lectures and Sessions, along with faculty Research Seminars and Research Interests (compiled by Marian Evinger, PhD) are listed in separate attachments.