Do better things with your time and learn stuff that matters. You are welcome.
Also be happy there is no emphasis on research.
Edit - do research if you want to be considered for a fellowship....jk your residency probably isn't on the approved list for Hyer or cottom or someone to select from.
This is the truth. Research is hard enough if you have funding and support staff and network for it... it is almost impossible without any of that.
I did some research posters, cases, cadaver study, multi-residency hospital cohort that we wrote up in a couple ways, a lit review as a student, etc and it was not a waste of time (we had good support to expedite it, though)... but I think that you probably make bigger faster gains just reading the good F&A textbooks and watching good surgical videos. There is not really any real research in surgery. That's sad but true... most surgical papers aren't even worth reading the abstracts. Some of the expert opinion articles are actually solid, even if it's low/no 'hierarchy of evidence.' For most journals I read, there are maybe 20+ articles, 5 or less even worth reading the paragraph abstract... maybe 1 or 2 worth skimming through and looking at the figures. It is just not like medicine where everyone in the country writes that Rx and takes that pill in the same way and you can measure the BP or glu or HLD, etc to know what is good EBM.
For surgery, the anatomy is the same. The docs have vastly different abilities and somewhat different training. Some journal articles are helpful in this regard (dissections, pearls for operations, etc). The pathologies have been around forever, though. We know what works. The only fairly useful surgery studies in my eyes are
Clinical practice guidelines and maybe reviews / meta-analysis (think Roukis etc) to
review the standards of care for various pathology and make sure you are still up to date for boards and just being a good doc. I also like the long term amp rates, re-op rates, recurrence rates, pt satisfaction, etc for various procedures (esp comparison of two similar indication procedures). Those articles are good but fairly rare... and my results won't ever be quite the same as the ones I read since my training/ability is different than the author's. The main problem with potentially good surgery articles becomes that the surgeons writing up are evaluation of THEIR OWN results... so of course their TAR or their limb salvage idea or whatever is going to rock. Any decent follow up is also hard to get... since patients are discharged once they are back to regular shoes and the study author doesn't really know who kept having pain on went for revision elsewhere or etc etc. You do have those rare situations like Kaiser where people are 'stuck' in that bubble, but even those people move or won't answer the phone later for the satisfaction study, etc.
Sure, there are also F&A cadaver studies for fixation constructs, ligament and tendon strengths, etc... but you can get the bottom line of those in one glance. 99% of those are common sense. If I see one more filler article from Asia that shows in sawbones or cadaver sensors or lasers that amputations change gait or that fractures cause arthrosis or that plates are stronger than pins, ahhhh. In reality, the techniques are different, but most "new" things are just minor implant improvements (often not worth the costs... at least for awhile) or minor technique alterations on things that have been done for decades.
People do what they're trained for and what makes sense to them. It doesn't mean anything if I read a Seattle paper on some technique if my facility doesn't have the fancy scope or weightbearing CT or whatever instruments to do it... or a West Penn article on flatfoot in kids doesn't help much me if I work at a VA and see all adult male diabetics, etc. At the end of the day, ExpDPM's results won't be mine won't be airbud's won't be dtrack's or any other DPM's. I'm sure we all get good results and the vast majority stay of DPMs within the standard of care, but there are variations. I may do real well with Lapidus where another guy does awesome using Scarf type repair for essentially the same types of bunion deformities. You will ultimately do what you are trained for, what makes sense and has good long term research (hopefully!) and use what you have available at your hospitals and surgery centers. Scanning JFAS nd FAI and journals or going to meetings is just to get a few new ideas here and there. It is good to be up to date, but if you follow texts published in the last decade or two, you are fine... those are basically a summary of best and most agreed research. Stay behind the cutting edge... you don't want to be the first, or the last, guy doing something.
It is good to put at least one or two "research" projects on your CV and learn from trying to write up a case study or series (lit review is even lower difficulty), but you will be in an uphill battle to do any more than that with no IRB, support, stats connections, etc where you matched. I would guess you have podiatry as the only residency in the community hospital (maybe that and FM?) if you say there is no research dept to support posters, papers, etc? You can still do something basic if you like, but you might find it takes a lot of efforts. If your hospital doesn't even have a Med Ed office or anything that could print a conference poster, Poster Session is good for printing a poster. Another choice would be trying to hook onto a cross-town hospital's research project (if one exists) that has good research for their residency, but they might want you to bring some cases/images/results (needs IRB you don't have) and you'll probably end up last author. Good luck and let us know what you are able to do... all it takes to do a lit review poster/paper is some library time (and sifting through a lot of bad articles).
