Barriers faced by medical students interested in research

Dear Sir

It has recently been reported that University of Nottingham medical students feel extracurricular research is important but experience significant obstacles (Nikkar-Esfahani et al. 2012). Further studies assessing medical students’ attitudes towards research and whether similar obstacles are seen at other medical schools could inform appropriate initiatives to improve research education at medical school. To explore these issues, we distributed a five-point Likert-scale anonymous questionnaire to delegates of the National Academic Medicine Student Conference 2012, a national conference for medical students interested in academic medicine. Response was high (82/100 delegates; 34 males, mean age 22.5 years) and representative of our target sample, with 96.3% involved in research at medical school. Medical students who attended the conference came from 18 different medical schools.

Involvement in research was most commonly due to interest in the research area (54.9%) and perceived importance of research for career progression (50.0%). Most students agreed that research was important to them (74.4%) and felt that learning research skills and engaging in projects should form part of the medical curriculum (79.3% and 72.0%, respectively). However, most felt that research was inadequately taught at their medical school (74.4%) and that they lacked opportunities to carry out research (73.2%). The common barriers faced were the lack of awareness of potential research projects and the lack of time allocated to conduct research (62.2% and 57.3%, respectively). Only 12.2% stated that the lack of motivation deterred them from research.

Medical students interested in academia reported significant barriers in conducting research at medical school. Despite this, most still managed to get involved in research (96.3%), enjoyed presenting their results at the conference (62.0%) and considered a career in academic medicine (67.1%). Our findings suggest that much of this success is more attributable to individual motivation rather than support from medical schools. Despite the General Medical Council's acknowledgement of the importance of research skills in doctors, educational opportunities to develop these vital skills in future doctors are limited and fail to support students interested in research. Development of ‘Student Research Offices’, as reported in Nikkar-Esfahani et al. (2012), and an appropriate research curriculum may help address these shortcomings.