Clinical research training: scientific literacy for the twenty-first century.

摘要

Concerns about the vitality and future of clinical research, including the rapid translation of findings to benefit patients, have been the focus of considerable debate and discussion within and beyond general internal medicine. Challenges to the current enterprise include constraints on research funding, financial pressures on academic medical centers that have diminished institutional support for protected time, and the intrinsic difficulties of balancing family and career responsibilities. The past decade has brought additional training opportunities from the National Institutes of Health, including the recent Clinical Science Translation Awards. However, the impact of specific exposure to research experiences and the content of training have received far less focused attention.In the February issue of the Journal, Lowe et al. report on the effectiveness of a 1-year resident training program in clinical research at University Medical Center Heidelberg in 2005. All residents from the Departments of Psychosomatic and General Internal Medicine participated in the program and completed assessments at baseline and 1 year. The same assessments were administered to comparable groups of residents with similar career intentions at two institutions with a similar focus on clinical research. The Clinical Research Methods course consisted of 33 90-minute lectures. The program was considered 'in-service training' and had no extramural support, so participants did not have additional time for research and had no additional time allocated for mentoring experiences. A rigorous evaluation included an assessment of methodological research knowledge, self-assessed research competence, and the number of original publications, reviews or meta-analyses, book articles, and grant proposals at baseline and 1 year. Of note, all residents were expected to pursue careers in clinical research.