[programmertote]

Speaking this as a spouse of a medical doctor -- case reports are sometimes a good way to increase the bullet point count in your CV if you are a medical resident. A lot of residents do that just for the sake of beefing up their CVs (to apply for fellowship for example).

[snapetom]

In vet med, case studies are still pretty important, but that's because vet med is in its infancy compared to human medicine. At least one case study, usually two, are required to be eligible to take boards. Future board renewals, I think for most boards, are "published one original piece of research or two case studies" among a slew of other requirements.

[copperx]

I don't see anything wrong with that by itself; with the amount of patients doctors see there should be one once in a while that is worth reporting. Or are such cases so rare that the doctor is incentivized to lie?

[sxg]

I think you may have missed the original commenter's point. Residents (and medical students) are highly incentivized to publish unrealistic numbers of papers and case reports. One case report doesn't cut it—you need literally dozens of publications to match into some of the most competitive residency and fellowship programs. The NRMP (match organizer) publishes a document every 2 years that summarizes all of these stats. The 2024 version is in the link below, and page 12 supports what I'm saying.

https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Charting_Out...

[digitalPhonix]

This is another example of Goodhart's law in action, right?

Weirdly Pediatrics (chart 7) skews the other way (less publications tended to get into residency programs)? Are those doctors/administrators/programs somehow seeing through the nonsense?

[husarcik]

I wonder if it's because pediatrics is not competitive unless applying to a top program.

[peyton]

27.7 works to match derm. Holy crap that’s a lot. No way. We would be gods of skincare by now.