Medical Scientist Training Program Training Grant

Enter the text here that is the new abstract information for your application. This section must be no longer than 30 lines of text. The Duke Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) was originally funded by NIGMS in 1966, and it has been continuously funded since that time. This application requests funding for 24 trainees. The goal of the Duke MSTP is to prepare young physician-scientists for careers in biomedical research and academic medicine by providing comprehensive training in both scientific research and clinical medicine through a highly integrated curriculum that leads to completion of both the MD and PhD degrees. The program's mission is to provide an intellectual foundation that will allow trainees to become the future thought leaders in biomedical science and academic medicine in the US. To accomplish these goals, the Program is built on a pioneering medical school curriculum that integrates medical education with original scholarly investigation. The defining feature of the Duke curriculum is that all medical students engage in significant scholarly activity in the third year. As a consequence, the core medical education takes place over three years, rather than four, with the preclinical basic sciences condensed into the first year and core clinical clerkships taught in the second year. This curriculum is therefore ideally suited to MD-PhD trainees, as it provides a comprehensive clinical foundation for PhD training, allows students to align their research interests with their long-term clinical interests, and shortens the time to the dual degree. This application builds on the Duke MSTP’s long history of training successful physician-scientists by incorporating a number of major changes and improvements, including: 1) Incorporation of improved medical school and graduate school assessment tools to track and evaluate students’ progress throughout their training; 2) Development and incorporation of enhanced opportunities for trainees to influence their own career development; 3) Improvement of the admissions process to ensure selection of outstanding candidates, including enhanced outreach efforts to undergraduate institutions to enhance the pipeline of qualified candidates; 4) Enhanced trainee oversight at multiple stages of the program, including an emphasis on identification of roadblocks during annual Individual Development Plan meetings between leadership and students; 5) Ensuring participation of outstanding faculty at all career levels; and 6) Creation of additional program activities with guidance from the program’s trainees and steering committee to ensure adequate program-wide training opportunities that foster program community, including enhanced vertical integration through Duke’s institution-wide Office of Physician-Scientist Development. Collectively, these new program initiatives will continue the Duke MSTP's longstanding tradition of excellence in MD-PhD training and substantially improve outcomes for the approximately 85-90 students in the program each year.