Science Scholars: Integrating Scientific Research Into Undergraduate Medical Education Through a Comprehensive Student-Led Preclinical Elective

Abstract

Introduction: One of the goals of evidence-based medical education is to familiarize future health care practitioners with the scientific method so they can interpret scholarly literature and communicate appropriately with patients. However, many students lack the skills necessary to conduct research themselves. We describe a preclinical elective course designed to equip students with these skills through workshops, mentorship, and research experience.

Methods: Through an application process, we selected first-year medical (M1) students who expressed interest in conducting basic, translational, or clinical research. Throughout the yearlong curriculum, students attended a series of 10 1-hour workshops to learn the skills necessary to engage in research. Additionally, each student was paired with a peer mentor. As their final project, students completed a specific aims page based on their projected research study.

Results: Over the course of 3 years, 96% of students secured a research position for the summer following M1, and 36% secured positions at external institutions with nationally competitive funding, compared to 10% of their peers who did not participate in the elective. Of students, 80% indicated that this elective helped them find and secure these research positions, and 75% of students reported that they learned valuable skills not taught in their medical curriculum.

Discussion: Participation in a preclinical research elective can provide immediate value in the form of research skills with the prospect of stimulating a lifelong interest in scientific inquiry. Our curriculum was delivered in a medical school setting, however it is applicable to any health care professional school.

Keywords: Career Choice; Evidence-Based Medicine; Mentoring; Physician-Scientist; Preclinical; Translational Research.

Figure 1.. Science Scholars curriculum participation timeline. First-year (M1) students selected to become Science Scholars attended sessions and met with their assigned mentors in order to attain the skills necessary to pursue their summer research experience. Second-year (M2) students were expected to present their research to their peers. The workshops were accessible to be attended by all medical students.

Figure 2.. Self-reported usefulness of the workshops. Relative answer proportions for the 10 workshops offered each year, when students who attended them were asked to rate how useful they found each workshop on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = not at all useful, 2 = not sure, 3 = somewhat useful, 4 = very useful, 5 = extremely useful). The workshop title abbreviations corresponded to those in Table 1; workshops that shared their abbreviation (such as How to Effectively Read Scientific Literature and How to do a Literature Review are both represented above as Literature in their respective years) are iterations of the same workshop with changed title and learning objectives as taught in the years indicated by the superscripts in Table 1. The Metrics, PubMed, and Statistics workshops from the first year (2017–2018) were replaced by the Hypothesis, Q&A, and Best Practices workshops, respectively, in the subsequent years (2018–2019, and 2019–2020). The overall subjective usefulness of the workshops improved between the years from the average score of 3.4 (2017–2018) to 3.8 (2018–2019), to 3.9 (2019–2020). The overall average score for all years combined was 3.7.