Currently submitted to: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: May 6, 2026
Open Peer Review Period: May 13, 2026 - Jul 8, 2026
(currently open for review)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Association between Graduate Education Completion and English Thesis Performance in Health and Medical School Graduates: A Single-center Retrospective Cohort Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Graduate education is expected to contribute to improving clinical and research capabilities, which in turn can lead to improved patient outcomes. However, there are few reports in Japan that quantitatively verify the impact of graduate school completion on specific academic outcomes (English thesis performance) and the relationship between changes in the environment such as doctors' work style reforms.
Objective:
To clarify the actual status of English thesis achievements for graduate students in the Graduate School of Health and Medical Sciences and the Graduate School of Medicine, and to examine the impact of graduate school completion on research initiative and productivity.
Methods:
This is a retrospective observational study of graduates and graduates in 2013~2023. The number of English papers was investigated using university IR data and PubMed. For medical school graduates, the percentage of dissertations and the number of dissertations in the doctoral and non-doctoral group were compared.
Results:
Of the 187 students who completed the Graduate School of Health and Medical Sciences, 65 (34.8%) had papers in English. In the analysis of medical school graduates (747 students), there was no significant difference between the proportion of those who had at least one English thesis (25.7%) and the non-completion group (23.6%) (P=0.52). However, in the analysis limited to the number of paper holders, the number of first author papers (median 5 vs 1, P<0.001) and the total number of papers (median 27 vs 1, P<0.001) were significantly higher in the completion group than in the non-completion group.
Conclusions:
It was suggested that completion of the doctoral program in the Graduate School of Medicine was strongly associated with leading role in research activities (lead author paper) and continued productivity rather than participation in the study itself. Clinical Trial: Not applicable
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