Research culture in Australian and New Zealand radiation oncology: Fact or fantasy?

Introduction: Fostering a research culture is a key goal of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists, yet there has never been an organization-wide enquiry into the extent to which this is being realized. The purpose of this work was to address that deficit for the Radiation Oncology (RO) Faculty to serve as a baseline for future comparison. The hypothesis was that such a culture is closer to fact than fantasy.

Methods: With College approval, three de-identified Excel spreadsheets detailing 25 research-related sub-categories of the Faculty's Continuing Professional Development (CPD) database were interrogated for the 2019-21 triennium, accepting that research activity in 2020-21 would be COVID-19 suppressed. The numbers obligated to self-report CPD were 482, 496 and 511, respectively. Primary endpoints were the percentages of ROs claiming at least one research-related activity overall, and in each of the sub-categories individually, by year. Secondary endpoints were the "breadth" (number of sub-categories claimed/individual) and "depth" (percentages solely claiming in one of four lower-level sub-categories), by year.

Results: ROs claimed in 23/25 sub-categories. The percentages of ROs claiming at least one research-related activity were 71%, 44%, and 62% in 2019-21, respectively. The median number of sub-categories claimed by these ROs was 2 (range 1-10) in each year. The commonest activity was journal article co-author (25%, 16% and 27%, respectively). For 2019, the most representative year, other common activities were inhouse/local meeting presentation (17%), invited lecture at state level or above (15%), manuscript peer review and research project principal investigator (14% each). The percentages of ROs solely claiming in one lower-level activity ranged between 4.4% and 5.9% per year.

Conclusion: A culture of research is arguably more fact than fantasy in ANZ. It is likely that Faculty curriculum requirements, research funding and other promotional initiatives have contributed substantively to this.