Academic Exposure of Doctors-In-Training in Maiduguri, Nigeria: A Five-year Compendium of Residents’ Presentations

Introduction: Residency training is built on a tripod of research, training, and services. This is well achieved through academic seminar presentations which are held two to three times weekly. This survey aims to examine the presentations of Resident Doctors for Medical Education.

Methods: The presentations from 2017 to 2022 were requested and pooled through a submission point. They were assembled and sorted out based on the presenter’s name, specialties, and year of presentation.

Results: The presentations covered all the 12 major subspecialties, with General Adult psychiatry having the highest of 41 (20.5%), while Social psychiatry had the lowest of 5 (2.5%). Only 40% followed presentation guidelines, and 30% were well formatted.

Conclusion: Compendium 1.0 is a comprehensive encyclopedia of academic presentations that will aid easy accessibility when needed. It is recommended that sessions on academic writing are regular, including plagiarism, referencing, and using writing software applications.

Maiduguri, the capital city of Borno State in northeastern Nigeria, faces multifaceted healthcare challenges, including limited resources, security concerns, and the aftermath of humanitarian crises. Despite these challenges, Maiduguri serves as a vital hub for medical education and training, hosting residency programs across various medical specialties. The academic exposure of resident doctors in Maiduguri reflects the dynamic interplay between clinical practice, research endeavors, and educational initiatives aimed at addressing regional healthcare needs [1]. The academic journey of resident doctors encompasses diverse experiences, contributions, and learning opportunities [2].

The academic exposure of doctors-in-training plays a pivotal role in shaping their professional development and competence within the healthcare system. The World Federation for Medical Education (WFME) defines Postgraduate medical education as the process in which doctors develop competencies under supervision towards independent practice after completing their basic medical qualification; which comprises pre-registration education, systematic professional education, specialist education and other formalized programs for defined expert functions [3].

Residency training encourages trainees to practice evidence-based medicine using knowledge acquired through research [4]. The trainees are not just trained to be consumers of knowledge, but also to add to the existing knowledge pools. This is achieved through academic seminar presentations, journal clubs, and literature reviews, under the close supervision of the consultants. Residency training is a postgraduate medical education where graduate doctors undergo further training in specific fields under the tutelage of qualified trainers in accredited hospital settings to become independent specialists [5].

Residency training is built on a tripod of research, training, and services. The academic seminar presentations of the Department are targeted towards addressing the tripod. In spite of the importance, there is limited study on the academic exposure of trainee doctors in Nigeria. A study by Umar, et al. 2021 [6] on the assessment of research engagement of Resident Doctors in Training in Northwestern Nigeria shows unsatisfactory research engagement by resident doctors. Contribution and exposure to research among postgraduate trainees in Nigeria are low. Positive but weak correlations existed between both residents’ participation in research prior to residency and residents’ involvement in journal meetings and their contribution to published research work during a residency program [7]. However most doctors-in-training in Nigeria have good interpersonal relations between residents and their trainers, which promotes a conducive atmosphere for the adequate academic exposure of the doctors in Nigeria [8].

The Compendium 1.0 is the first retrospective compilation of such academic presentations over the last five years among Resident Doctors of the Institution in the various psychiatric subspecialties under the supervision of assigned Consultants [9]. It serves as a comprehensive repository of presentations delivered by resident doctors in Maiduguri over a span of five years. It encapsulates the breadth and depth of academic endeavors undertaken by doctors-in-training, showcasing their contributions to medical knowledge, clinical innovation, and community engagement. Through the analysis of presentation topics, trends, and outcomes, this compendium offers valuable insights into the educational landscape and scholarly output within Maiduguri’s medical community.

This five-year compendium aims to explore and document the presentations made by resident doctors during their training period, shedding light on the academic landscape and knowledge dissemination within Maiduguri’s medical community. The objectives are to determine the pattern of academic seminar presentations in residency and how it fulfills the postgraduate medical program requirements in Psychiatry, to simplify and provide easy access to presentations in a library on search engines, and to provide room for collaborating with others and sharing references and ideas.

Resident trainees during the 5-year period (including those who have completed their residency training) were contacted individually, were informed on the purpose of the research, consents were taken, and were requested to forward their presentations to an assigned mail. Only the presentations of the Resident Doctors at the morning academic meetings of the Institution were included in this survey The presentations from 2017 to 2022 were requested and pooled through a submission point (ard@fnphmaiduguri.gov.ng). They were assembled and sorted out based on the presenter’s name, specialties, and year of presentation. The Mendeley Referencing Manager (2022) was employed for a citation using the American Psychological Association (APA) referencing style, 7th Version. The authors derived the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) link from Google Drive. These were compiled together in the compendium as sampled below (Table 1).

At the end of the data collection, 200 of the expected presentations could be assessed from 2017 to 2022 with 45 presenters cited. About 40% followed presentation guidelines, and 30% were well formatted. Only 2% were featured in conference proceedings and 1% in press.

Table 2 shows that the 200 collated presentations covered twelve major subspecialties. General adult psychiatry titles are the most presented with 41 presentations (20.5%); followed by Neuropsychiatry with 30 presentations (15%). The least presented are geriatric psychiatry with 7 presentations (3.5%), and Community and social psychiatry 5 presentations (2.5%).

Figure 1 shows that most of the topics collated were from 2019 representing 33% of all the topics presented, with 2021 being the lowest (7%).

The compendium 1.0 comprised forty-five citations from the collated presentations, thus, contributing substantially to the continuous medical education both within the Institution and beyond. This survey brings to light the intensive efforts of the trainees in academic advancement in the Institution. The fact that the largest pool of the presentation is on General Adult Psychiatry is in tandem with the most variant subspecialty of discussion in Residency Training.

Some observations made include different forms of plagiarism, lack of in-text citation, challenges with referencing, insufficient proofreading, lack of backup storage, missed presentations, wrong dating, issues with titles, and repetitions. A possible reason for some of these is the deficit in mentorship, which would have improved the output [10]. Another is the lack of collaboration with resident doctors who are more familiar with such, which would have produced a network that could yield better presentations [11]. The inability to devote enough time to a presentation was another identified factor, which may be due to the load of work in the training, and inadequate time management [7]. Some of the reasons for the inappropriate corrections and formatting may be due to the reduced motivation for academic presentation due to poor remuneration and limited trainers to guide the trainees [8].

The presentation exercises make residents do a lot of research work in various fields of Psychiatry, thus acquiring knowledge to meet postgraduate education needs and contributing to medical education. Also, the pattern and content of the presentations were in tune with the postgraduate medical education training program for Psychiatry. However, many presentations need more review and formatting before storage. It is thereby recommended that the presenters date their presentations and ensure consistency, while presentations should be uploaded soon after correction. Furthermore, the residents should perfect electronic referencing tools and include in-text citations and reference lists in their presentations. Also, regular training on academic writing skills such as plagiarism, referencing, electronic research tools, literature review, editing, cloud storage, and publishing. Finally, journal reviewing, annual collation of presentations, research studies following observations, mentorship and collaboration, and including more of community, social, forensic, emergency psychiatry, and other less covered.

The team expresses its appreciation to the Institution under the leadership of Prof Ibrahim Abdu Wakawa, the Department and all the Resident Doctors (past and present) who turned up their presentations for this compilation. YAK, AS, and UBM conceptualized this work, YAK and AS designed the methods, YAK, AS, KUM, NMS, FMK, and KEE compiled the data, UBM, PNO, and AAM recruited the resources, while PNO, AAM oversaw the project administration and supervision, all the authors were involved in final proofreading.

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