The Hand Surgery Subspecialty Education Program in Turkey and its Impact on Productivity in The Hand Surgery Literature

Abstract

Objective: The aim of study of this study is to evaluate the hand surgery fellow ship education program in terms of Turkey's productivity in the hand and wrist literature Methods: Original articles published in Ave highly cited hand surgery journals between 2009 and 2019 were investigated, In order to examine the increase in quantity and quality of the published articles over time, the publications were divided into two groups according to two equal time periods (A=01.01.2009-30.06.2014 and B=01.07.2014-31.12.2019 period). Period A represented the period before the hand surgery subspecialty training program, and period B represented the period after it. Results: A total of 5,179 articles on hand and wrist research from five journals were identified in the database of Web of Science from 2009 to 2019. It was found that 51.5% (n=2,665) of the studies were published in period A and 48.5% (n=2514) were published in period B. Turkey had 34 publication in period A (ranked 15th) and 55 publication in period B (ranked 11th). Contribution of Turkey to the total hand and wrist research increased by 69.2% (1.3% versus 2.2%) between the two periods, and a significant increase was observed in articles from 2009 to 2019 in Turkey (R2=0.67, p=0,003) Conclusion: We observed a significant increase in the number of articles about hand and wrist research from Turkey after hand surgery fellowship education program. Hand surgery fellowship training program positively affected scientific productivity of Turkey.