Pathways to Mentorship and Research: Training the Next Generation Physician-Scientists

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PROJECT SUMMARY Physician-scientists play a unique role in bridging the gap between basic science and clinicians through the identification of important clinical questions and translating results to improve patient care. Unfortunately, the physician-scientist workforce continues to diminish and contributes to negative, long-lasting consequences in biomedical research. Many residency programs focus heavily on acquiring medical knowledge as opposed to fostering intellectual curiosity and an introduction into the biomedical research field. In this proposal, we aim to enhance attractiveness and preparedness for a career as a physician-scientist during residency training. Furthering the diminishing interest in a career as a physician-scientist is the ability to identify an encouraging and successful mentor. There is a critical need for a renewed emphasis on established physician- scientists as role models to trainees. Infectious Disease and Immunology are fundamental areas of science that greatly benefits from a robust physician-scientist workforce. Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, particularly in the Departments of Medicine and Surgery, has a long track record of training physician-scientists. We hypothesize that early and longitudinal mentorship combined with development of research and professional development skills in the areas of Infectious Diseases and Immunology will make the physician-scientist career path attractive and sustainable. To this end, we propose the implementation of the MGH-Next Generation Physician-Scientist Training Pathways (MGH-Next Gen PSTP) program in Immunology and Infectious Disease. The MGH-Next Gen PSTP program is centered around the following objectives: Objective 1: Foster the creation of important scientific contributions through strong, longitudinal mentorship with an emphasis on leadership essentials. Objective 2: Develop sufficient basic laboratory and epidemiology approaches necessary to conduct high-quality research in the areas of immunology and infectious diseases. Objective 3: Formulate hypothesis-based research questions, development and execution of a research project, and effectively communicate the significance of their science. Together, these initiatives are designed to attract, train, and retain MDs in biomedical investigation at the most critical juncture of their career - residency training.