Mind the Gap: Representation of Medical Education in Cardiology-Related Articles and Journals.

BACKGROUND: Cardiology fellowship programs are at the interface of medical education and the care of patients suffering from the leading cause of mortality in the United States, yet there is an apparent lack of research guiding the effective education of fellows.
OBJECTIVE: We sought to quantify the number of publications in cardiology journals that pertained to the education of cardiology trainees and the number of cardiologists participating in education research.
METHODS: For the period between January and December 2012, we cataloged cardiology-specific and general medical/medical education journals and sorted them by impact factor. Tables of content were reviewed for articles with an educational focus, a cardiology focus, or both. We recorded the authors' areas of medical training, and keywords from each cardiology journal's mission statement were reviewed for emphasis on education.
RESULTS: Twenty-six cardiology journals, containing 6645 articles, were reviewed. Only 4 articles had education themes. Ten general medical and 15 medical education journals contained 6810 articles. Of these, only 7 focused on medical education in cardiology, and none focused on cardiology fellowship training. Among the 4887 authors of publications in medical education journals, 25 were cardiologists (less than 1%), and among the 1036 total words in the mission statements of all cardiology journals, the term "education" appeared once.
CONCLUSIONS: Published educational research is lacking in cardiology training, and few cardiologists appear to be active members of the education scholarship community. Cardiology organizations and academic journals should support efforts to identify target areas of study and publish scholarship in educational innovation.