Mid-Career Research Training for the Generalist Physician: Case Study of a Balancing Act
Background: Although generalist physician faculty typically lack the skills needed to conduct research, few medical schools offer on-site faculty development programs that teach research skills. Description: To address this dilemma, our medical school introduced a part-time Primary Care Research Fel...
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Published in | Teaching and learning in medicine Vol. 20; no. 2; pp. 180 - 185 |
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Main Authors | , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
United States
Taylor & Francis Group
01.04.2008
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Background: Although generalist physician faculty typically lack the skills needed to conduct research, few medical schools offer on-site faculty development programs that teach research skills. Description: To address this dilemma, our medical school introduced a part-time Primary Care Research Fellowship offering full-day classes once a week over 10 months. Evaluation: We asked the 22 general internists, general pediatricians, and family physicians who participated in the program to rate their experience, and we measured their research productivity during the 3 years before and 3 years after completing the program, using a group of matched controls for comparison. Participants rated the program highly and increased their aggregate research productivity from 1 publication before completing the program to 6 publications afterward, although this increase did not reach statistical significance (
p
= .09). Controls exhibited substantially higher baseline productivity than fellows (10 publications vs. 1 publication,
p
= .03), but controls' productivity changed little between the first and second measurement periods (10 and 7 publications, respectively). Conclusion: Our mid-career research training program enabled primary care academic faculty to gain confidence in their ability to conduct a scientific study with minimal disruption to their teaching and clinical activities. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 1040-1334 1532-8015 |
DOI: | 10.1080/10401330801991899 |