Identifying the Next Generation of Academic Surgeons and Physician Leaders

Many highly competitive academic general surgery residency programs share the mission of training the next generation of academic surgeons. There is a widely held belief that encouraging publications throughout residency will promote sustained research productivity and facilitate a pathway into an academic career. Consequently, the total number of publications is one of the strongest predictors for resident selection among top ranked general surgery programs. However, there is currently a lack of evidence supporting the assumptions that preresidency productivity will be sustained or predictive of an academic career. With an increasingly competitive applicant pool and recent paradigm shifts in the evaluation of applicants, it is becoming increasingly important for program directors to identify meaningful metrics to predict sustained academic success and successful academic surgeons. We discuss current trends in the evaluation of applicants’ research, limitations of these methods, potential implications, and alternatives.