Wetenschappelijke productie van orthopedische opleidingsklinieken

Objective

To evaluate the feasibility of the requirements for scientific participation in the Dutch orthopaedic residency programme by assessing the numbers of articles published by orthopaedic teaching hospitals.

Design

Descriptive.

Method

All 29 orthopaedic teaching hospitals in the Netherlands were asked to draw up a list of articles published from 2004 to 2009. The publications were subdivided into papers indexed in PubMed and papers published in the Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Orthopedie (NTvO, Netherlands Journal of Orthopaedics) and the Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Traumatologie (NTvT, Netherlands Journal of Traumatology).

Results

There was an overall response rate of 72% (21/29). For the 8 non-responders a search of PubMed and the NTvO-NTvT journal databases was used to compile a list of their publications. The university teaching hospitals (n = 8) published 1150 articles, 1118 of which were indexed in PubMed, 19 published in the NTvO and 13 in the NTvT. Peripheral teaching hospitals (n = 21) published 689 articles: 590 indexed in PubMed, 77 published in the NTvO and 22 in the NTvT. In the peripheral teaching hospitals there was a positive correlation between the number of orthopaedic surgeons and PhD students and the number of published articles.

Conclusion

Of the 29 teaching hospitals, 9 (31%) did not meet the requirements for publication specified in the Dutch orthopaedic residency programme guidelines. The number of published articles is related to the numbers of orthopaedic surgeons and PhD students in peripheral teaching hospitals. The requirements for the minimum number of publications could therefore be revised to reflect the proportion of orthopaedic surgeons in each teaching hospital. The introduction of a weighting factor that accounts for the quality of the publications would also result in a more balanced assessment.

Conflict of interest: none declared. Financial support: Dr. C.C.P.M. Verheyen received payment from AMG, Bayer and Boehringer for consultancy and lectures that were not related to the submitted work.