Postdoctoral National Institutes of Health F32 Grants: Broken Pipeline in the Development of Surgeon-Scientists.

OBJECTIVE: We examined trainees in surgery and internal medicine who received National Institutes of Health (NIH) F32 postdoctoral awards to determine their success rates in obtaining future NIH funding. BACKGROUND: Trainees participate in dedicated research years during residency (surgery) and fellowship (internal medicine). They can obtain an NIH F32 grant to fund their research time and have structured mentorship. METHODS: We collected NIH F32 grants (1992-2021) for Surgery Departments and Internal Medicine Departments from NIH RePORTER, an online database of NIH grants. Nonsurgeons and noninternal medicine physicians were excluded. We collected demographic information on each recipient, including gender, current specialty, leadership positions, graduate degrees, and any future NIH grants they received. A Mann-Whitney U test was used for continuous variables, and a χ 2 test was utilized to analyze categorical variables. An alpha value of 0.05 was used to determine significance. RESULTS: We identified 269 surgeons and 735 internal medicine trainees who received F32 grants. A total of 48 surgeons (17.8%) and 339 internal medicine trainees (50.2%) received future NIH funding ( P < 0.0001). Similarly, 24 surgeons (8.9%) and 145 internal medicine trainees (19.7%) received an R01 in the future ( P < 0.0001). Surgeons who received F32 grants were more likely to be department chair or division chiefs ( P =0.0055 and P < 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS: Surgery trainees who obtain NIH F32 grants during dedicated research years are less likely to receive any form of NIH funding in the future compared with their internal medicine colleagues who received F32 grants.

Pre-operative Anxiety in Pediatric Surgery Patients: Multiple Case Study Analysis with Literature Review.

Pre-operative anxiety affects millions of pediatric surgery patients each year and can have both short and long-term adverse effects in the post-operative period. As a result, it is particularly important for healthcare providers and others involved in the child's care, such as the parents, to be aware of interventions that can be used to reduce the onset of pre-operative anxiety and, thus, the likelihood of negative post-operative changes. The purpose of this paper is to familiarize the reader with the issue of pre-operative anxiety through a review of the literature and analysis of case studies. First, the paper looks at the causes of pre-operative anxiety and its effect on the development of maladaptive behavioral, emotional, and physiological changes. It then discusses the ways pre-operative anxiety can be measured and current methods for reducing the post-operative adverse outcomes associated with it. After doing so, it proposes the need for additional research and the use of precision medicine by physicians.