An internal medicine interest group research program can improve scholarly productivity of medical students and foster mentoring relationships with internists.

Background: Shortages in primary care careers such as internal medicine are projected in the future. Conducting research is an explicit requirement for graduate medical education and interest in research is growing in undergraduate medical education. Purpose: We hypothesized that a medical student research initiative could increase student research productivity and foster mentoring relationships with internists. Method: We compared the number of medical student presentations, awards, and peer-reviewed publications before and after a brief research initiative at a single institution and recorded comments from student participants; data collected before the initiative were retrospective, and data after the initiative were collected prospectively. Mann–Whitney U was used for statistical analysis. Results: Twenty-seven students participated in our workshop initiative during the study period (2000–2005). Eighteen (67%) subsequently had presentations, research awards, and/or publications during the study period...