Bibliometric analysis of medical speciality dissertations studies in family medicine departments and clinics between 2000-2020

Objective: The aim of this study was to conduct a bibliometric analysis of medical specialty dissertations studies conducted in Family Medicine departments and clinics between 2000 and 2020. Materials and Methods: This descriptive study was conducted by examining 1628 dissertations in the field of family medicine specialization between January 1, 2000 and January 1, 2020 in the National Thesis Center database of the Council of Higher Education. In the first stage, information about the thesis (research type, thesis topic, methods used in the research, etc.) was recorded. In the second stage, the conversion of the theses into articles was evaluated by entering the name and surname information of the thesis authors and advisors, the title of the thesis in Turkish and English, and keywords in the search fields of Google, Google Scholar, PubMed, TR Index ULAKBİM and Dergipark search engines. The journal indexes, Q classification and citation numbers of the publications of the theses were determined. Results: When the distribution of the 1628 theses examined within the scope of the study was analyzed, it was seen that there was a great increase in the number of theses after 2014. Of the specialty students, 1009 (62.0%) were female. Of the theses, 977 (60.0%) were from university hospitals and 651 (40.0%) were from training and research hospitals. The number of theses in which the advisor title was professor was 505 (31.0%), associate professor was 579 (35.6%), assistant professor was 353 (21.7%), and specialist was 191 (11.7%). When the branch distribution of thesis advisors is examined; 1420 theses (87.2%) were supervised by family medicine specialists. The most frequently selected topics in theses were preventive health services (8.7%), anxiety and depression (7.1%) and diabetes mellitus (6.1%). Descriptive / cross-sectional studies were the most preferred research type with 1414 (86.8%) theses. Project support was received in 161 (9.9%), questionnaires were used in 1319 (81.0%), laboratories were used in 234 (14.4%) and radiologic tests were used in 96 (5.6%) of the theses. The use of project support, laboratory and radiologic tests decreased statistically significantly over the years (p<0.05). 458 (28.1%) of the theses were published in any journal. Considering the databases of the publications; 92 (20.1%) were published in SCI/SCI Expanded, 190 (41.5%) in international databases and 176 (38.4%) in national databases. Conclusions: The number of theses in the field of Family Medicine and the rate of thesis advisors being from the discipline of Family Medicine have increased over the years, thus valuable scientific contributions have been created especially for primary health care services. Although the rate and process of publication of the theses was found to be similar to other branches, it was found to be higher than the studies conducted in the literature in the field of Family Medicine. Although it is seen that the discipline of Family Medicine is gradually strengthening, the stage of turning theses into articles should be encouraged more, and the experience of thesis advisors in this regard gains importance.