Rejuvenating clinician-scientist training

Abstract

Clinician-scientists are becoming increasingly rare in medicine as a whole, but especially in ophthalmology. There is a structural gap between MD-PhD training and K-series awards where interested candidates go through residency and fellowship without any structured research exposure or involvement. Furthermore, the success rate of the MD-PhD and K awards leaves much to be desired. The authors propose a redeployment of training resources to reconfigure residency and fellowship training programs for interested candidates with sufficient additional time for a credible research project, augmented salary, and sound mentoring. Opportunities for research training in nontraditional pathways to diversify skill sets and build interdisciplinary teams also would be a prime objective of this novel "Learn-and-Earn" approach.

Keywords: clinician-scientist; education; training.