The birth of the American Physician Scientists Association--the next generation of Young Turks.

The American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) was started a century ago to foster and to address the needs of the younger physician-scientists. A hundred years later, ASCI remains one of the premier organizations for physician-scientists and one of most well-respected organizations in the medical community. I have had the opportunity and pleasure to interact with the ASCI not only as an organization through my tenure as president of the American Physician Scientists Association, but also with its members over the last four years. In my view, the same characteristics that permeate ASCI the organization also define ASCI the membership--mentorship, exemplary role models, advocacy, and leadership.

Creating SPACE to evolve academic assessment.

Universities and research institutions have to assess individuals when making decisions about hiring, promotion and tenure, but there are concerns that such assessments are overly reliant on metrics and proxy measures of research quality that overlook important factors such as academic rigor, data sharing and mentoring. These concerns have led to calls for universities and institutions to reform the methods they use to assess research and researchers. Here we present a new tool called SPACE that has been designed to help universities and institutions implement such reforms. The tool focuses on five core capabilities and can be used by universities and institutions at all stages of reform process.

Strategies for Supporting Physician-Scientists in Faculty Roles: A Narrative Review With Key Informant Consultations.

PURPOSE: Physician-scientists are a population in decline globally. Solutions to reverse this decline often have focused on the training pipeline. Less attention has been paid to reducing attrition post training, when physician-scientists take up faculty roles. However, this period is a known time of vulnerability because of the pressures of clinical duties and the long timeline to securing independent research funding. This narrative review explored existing knowledge regarding how best to support physician-scientists for success in their faculty roles. METHOD: The authors searched the Medline, Embase, ERIC, and Cochrane Library databases for articles published from 2000 to 2016 on this topic and interviewed key informants in 2015 to solicit their input on the review results. RESULTS: The authors reviewed 78 articles and interviewed 16 key informants. From the literature, they developed a framework of organizational (facilitate mentorship, foster community, value the physician-scientist role, minimize financial barriers) and individual (develop professional and research skills) strategies for supporting physician-scientists. They also outlined key knowledge gaps representing topics either rarely or never addressed in the reviewed articles (percent research time, structural hypocrisy, objective assessment, group metrics, professional identity). The key informants confirmed the identified strategies and discussed how the gaps were particularly important and impactful. CONCLUSIONS: This framework offers a basis for assessing an organization's existing support strategies, identifying outstanding needs, and developing targeted programming. The identified gaps require attention, as they threaten to undermine the benefits of existing support strategies.

Maximising SHO training by inclusion of research fellows into a novel hybrid rota.

INTRODUCTION: As a result of current government legislation, junior surgical trainees are increasingly working in shift patterns. Night shifts provide few training opportunities and recent debate has focused on the most effective way of providing appropriate surgical training in the face of these working pattern restrictions. METHODS: At York Hospital, we have recently implemented a new hybrid rota in general surgery which uses research fellows to cover the majority of night-time shifts at SHO level. RESULTS & DISCUSSION: Surgical trainees have benefited by spending a much greater proportion of their time working with patients during the day where training is more continuous, better supervised and more uniform. Research fellows have benefited in being able to maintain their clinical skills whilst having sufficient free time to pursue research during the day. Extending the role of the research fellow at night to include registrar duties could also release higher surgical trainees from some night-time service commitments and allow them to benefit from more day-time training.