Success of Resident Research Grants in Orthopaedic Trauma

Purpose: Research participation during residency is critical to developing competent surgeon-scientists who understand the principles of research and literature analysis. Although many young clinicians want to commit themselves to orthopaedic research, obtaining funding can be a major barrier. We aim to understand the impact of grant funding to residents from organizations that award orthopaedic trauma grants.

Methods: We obtained the names and project titles of all orthopedic grant awardees from 3 nongovernmental funding agencies: AO Trauma, OTA, and Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation (OREF) from 2000 to 2020. We excluded all project titles that did not pertain to orthopaedic trauma. We then used the remaining project titles and awardee names to search 3 public bibliographic databases (Google Scholar, PubMed, and Embase) for resulting publications.

Results: Between 2000 and 2020, we identified 377 orthaepedic trauma research grant recipients, 227 AO grants, 99 OTA grants, and 51 OREF grants. Of all grant recipients, 142 young clinicians (37.7%) published a related manuscript. The mean time to publication was 3.75 ± 0.26 years (range, 0-15 years), with 90% published within 6 years. The AO Foundation and OTA provided similar numbers of grants per year (11.3 ± 4.8 vs 11 ± 2.26) but had different success rates. Only 33.9% of the AO Foundation grants resulted in publications while 44.4% of the OTA grants resulted in publications. OREF had a similar success rate to OTA with a 42.4% publication rate but offered fewer trauma grants per year (5.6 ± 1.49).

Conclusion: Grants for orthopaedic trauma research promote residents to contribute to the field and offer novel information. Nearly 40% of resident research grants resulted in a publication, which may end up higher since more recent grants may not be complete and have not met the mean time to publication yet. Even if the cost of unsuccessful awards is included, the cost per successful paper is fairly low. These grants represent an opportunity for residents to do research that would otherwise remain unfunded. The long-term effect on these awards on the career path of the recipients remains unknown.