Evaluation of the academic achievements of clinician health services research scientists involved in “pre-K” career development award programs

Abstract

Abstract Introduction: Research career development awards (CDAs) facilitate development of clinician-scientists. This study compared the academic achievements of individuals in a structured institutional “pre-K” CDA program, the Mayo Clinic Kern Scholars program, with individuals who applied for but were not admitted to the Kern program (“Kern applicants”), and awardees of other unstructured internal CDAs. Methods: This was a longitudinal cohort study of clinicians engaged in research at Mayo Clinic between 2010 and 2019. The primary outcome was time to the 15th new peer-reviewed publication after the program start, adjusted for baseline number of publications. Secondarily, we described successful awarding of federal funding by the NIH or VA. Results: The median (IQR) number of baseline publications was highest among Kern Scholars compared to Kern Applicants or other CDA awardees [16 (12, 29) vs 5 (1, 11) and 8 (5, 16); P < 0.001]. After adjustment for baseline publications, the time to 15th new publication was significantly shorter for Kern Scholars than for the two comparator groups (P<0.001). Similar findings were observed with total new publications within 5 years (P < 0.001), as well as number of new first-/last-author publications within 5 years (P < 0.001). The overall frequency of K-awards, R-awards (or equivalent), or any funding were similar between groups, with the exception of R03 awards, which were significantly more common among Kern Scholars (P = 0.002). Conclusion: The Kern Scholars program is a successful training model for clinician-scientists that demonstrated comparatively greater acceleration of scholarly productivity than other internal CDA programs.