Medical Scientist Training Program

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ABSTRACT The central mission of the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at Columbia University's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (VP&S) is to train clinician-scientists to become leaders in biomedical research. Growing complexity of medicine and science has made it challenging to sustain a robust pipeline of clinician-scientists into the biomedical workforce. The VP&S MSTP has implemented efficiencies to integrate medical and PhD research training that keep pace with the interdisciplinary, quantitative, collaborative, and diverse nature of biomedical scholarship. The VP&S MSTP has evolved a flexible curricular model, providing outstanding and efficient training and mentorship to support the output of committed, clinically fluent, biomedical researchers. Trainees undertake an 18-month preclinical medical curriculum followed by 2 clinical clerkships, then PhD research for 3.5-4.5 years, and finally the major block of clinical clerkships. Because of MSTP's emphasis on integration, preclinical students are engaged in PhD courses and lab rotations; and PhD students are engaged in a unique clinical competence program. After the 7 or 8 year MD-PhD program, trainees emerge as creative, rigorous, diligent, resilient scientists who are also exceptional and compassionate clinicians. Specific missions of VP&S MSTP include: 1) Enhancing reproducibility of biomedical research results through training in scientific rigor and transparency; 2) Promoting a training culture with highest standards to ensure the safety, ethics, and well-being of all; 3) Imparting appreciation and ability to work in diverse teams and cultivate inclusivity; and 4) Nurturing superb skills to communicate scientific findings to a wide range of audiences. Critical enhancements to the VP&S MSTP include abundant career mentoring to promote successful transition into dual-degree careers; training in rigorous research design, as well as quantitative, computational and statistical methods; and nurturing of ethics, responsibility, diversity, and inclusivity in biomedical research and clinical practice. The trainee cohort is superb and increasingly diverse. More than 130 outstanding investigators act as thesis mentors. Program leadership has decades of graduate and medical education experience. The duration of trainee appointments would be for the first 2 years of PhD research, and the projected number of trainees across all cohorts would be 116 students. Measurable objectives that VP&S MSTP intends to achieve are: 1) Maintaining or improving high levels of dual-degree attainment (98%) and rapid time to completion (7.7 years); 2) Increasing the frequency of rigorous, impactful, first-authored papers from 93% up to 100%; 3) Bettering the 5-yr average of underrepresented racial and ethnic minority trainees (23%) to a steady 30%; and 4) Inspiring post-grad training that will increase long-term alumni retention in research careers (70%) up to 80%. VP&S MSTP graduates genuinely learn how to discover new knowledge, translate discoveries to the clinic, and then guide others through this critical mission.