Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP)

The mission of the Boston University (BU) Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine MD/PhD program is to embrace the education of talented students and promote their development into clinician-scientist leaders. The entering class of 2024 was the first to receive full funding from the school. This new T32 proposal application intends to fund 4 MD/PhD students per year. We will recruit, train, and inspire our students to become clinician scientists by providing research and clinical training in our urban teaching hospital Boston Medical Center, which is one of the largest hospitals in the New England area. Our goal is to train students that will strive to use both their clinician and scientist identities to solve health care challenges that can improve human health or even prevent disease. To achieve this goal, BU uses evidence-based teaching practices that promote the knowledge and skills required to develop competencies necessary to conduct rigorous and reproducible research as a clinician scientist. Our courses, mentoring system, and exposure to a unique health care setting has enhanced commitment to clinician-scientist careers, as the number of recent graduates who have applied and been accepted to Physician Scientist Training Programs (PSTPs) and other research-oriented residences has increased. Although our trainees now graduate with more publications and first-author papers than those graduates from the previous leadership, time-to-degree (TTD) has increased. We also found that students with caregiving responsibilities have a slightly longer TTD. We aim to maintain both our high retention rates and scholarly productivity while decreasing TTD for all students. However, MD/PhD students often experience anxiety as they transition between clinical and research settings, as they navigate between their clinician and scientist identities in the face of unknown expectations. To better support current and future students, along with current MD/PhD-specific courses (e.g., MD800 to ease student transition back to third-year medical school), we developed a new series, Enterprising, Mentoring, Balance, Resilience & Adeptness in Clinician-Scientist Education (EMBRACE), which will be facilitated by faculty from the Mental Health Counseling Program and other BU educators to enhance the skills of our trainees. As students immerse themselves in curricula available from 12 degree-granting programs and enrichment opportunities available through institutional resources (e.g., BU Clinical & Translational Science Institute), they will also have access to support infrastructure (e.g., educational support services, Community Catalyst Center) that ensures their success. We hypothesize that EMBRACE, support infrastructure, and our extensive mentoring team will promote the resilience and self-confidence needed to sustain a healthy work-life balance that allows them to persist through stress and avoid burnout as they navigate transitions between their professional and personal identities. We believe that programs such as EMBRACE will encourage our students to pursue long-term careers as clinician scientists that deliver “exceptional healthcare without exception” to all patients.