Educating Physician Scientists in Psychiatry (EPSP): Firing up the next generation of translational and clinical neuroscientists

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Project Abstract Educating Physician Scientists in Psychiatry (EPSP) aims to establish a residency research training track. Our goal is to recruit medical graduates with significant research experience into careers in basic, translational or clinical neuroscience research by capitalizing on Penn’s rich neuroscience environment. EPSP will be guided by three principles: the centrality of mentorship to research success, the critical need to recruit the best trainees with attention to diversity, and the importance of training that is both rigorous and ethical. The program provides increasing protected research time during residency training starting with 10% time in year 1, culminating in 70% in the 4th and last year, while meeting ACGME requirements. Simultaneously, EPSP provides increasing time for “formal” research education, comprised of both required courses and multiple optional classes, seminars, workshops, and journal clubs. This structure permits each trainee a personalized experience. Finally, in the last two years, trainees will have the opportunity to obtain pilot funding, providing the ultimate hands-on experience: from research design to data collection, and to analysis and preparation for publication or presentation. Together, this training environment will accelerate the transition to careers as independent physician scientist psychiatrists. Importantly, EPSP’s emphasis on the primacy of mentoring in the success of young physician scientists means that the PIs and Program Director will have significant mentoring time with the trainees to closely monitor progress and track the mentor- mentee relationship. Having garnered extra research experience under attentive mentoring, trainees will be prepared to tackle the complex scientific challenges facing psychiatry.