Training Clinician Scientists as Outstanding Clinicians and Imaging Scientists

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PROJECT SUMMARY The growing role of imaging in clinical care and biomedical research has resulted in an acute shortage of well- trained clinician-scientists in Radiology. Only a small fraction of current residents choose academics, fewer pursue research, and fewer still garner funding. The UT Southwestern (UTSW) Department of Radiology developed a unique program to train outstanding clinicians and fundable team leaders and scientists. It is based upon the successful and proven model Dr. Mattrey built at UCSD prior to joining UTSW. We select applicants with proven track record in research – those that extended medical school by 1 or more years to perform research, rather than rely on attracting clinically bound trainees to academics. UTSW is fortunate to have attracted over 130 T32 qualified applicants per year over the past 3 years with such a track record. We interview from this group those with excellent medical school performance to ensure that they will perform as well as their highly competitive clinical colleagues. The UTSW training model was improved by 1) guaranteeing an internship slot in our top ranked medicine or surgery programs, and 2) providing 9 months of elective time in the last training year, after the board examination, to hone clinical skills, complete or transition their research if they changed their clinical focus, and time to submit a career award guided by their mentors. The training model immerses the trainee in mentored research and clinical training over the entire 6 years. It begins with the internship year that provides 3 months in Radiology to select a mentor and a project, and prepare them to spend their 2nd year dedicated to research unencumbered by clinical responsibilities. It also keeps trainees engaged during the subsequent 4 clinical years to build upon research by spending 6 weeks of dedicated research time per year, and more so in their last clinical year providing them nearly 2 years of dedicated research. In addition to research training, clinical training will be identical and in sync with their clinical peers making them equally skilled, but will be tailored during the last year to meet their clinical as well as their research goals. In addition to the extensive standard clinical lectures, they will have additional lectures and workshops specific to the needs of a clinician scientist. The mentorship provided over the entire 6 years by their career mentor – selected from one of our 9 clinician-scientists, will be supplemented by their research mentor they select by the end of their internship year providing them role models to guide their future careers. UTSW and the UTSW Department of Radiology are well suited to train the next generation of imaging scientists. Radiology has an extremely supportive Chairman, outstanding resources and infrastructure, and outstanding well-funded mentors in Radiology (>6.5M/year). We added 4 non-Radiology mentors that are engaged in imaging research. Our mentors have trained over 250 trainees in the past 10 years, have 40 current trainees, and are PIs on 42 active grants totaling $22.4M/year with non-competing renewals through 2022. Their trainees have published 690 unique manuscripts the majority of which in high impact journals.