Personal values influencing career path in academic medicine: Perspectives of selected Canadian trainees

Tsoi, Marissa; Teitge, Braden D.; Madan, Christopher R.; Francescutti, Louis H.

Abstract

To pursue research, education, and health policy in one’s career, broadly defined as academic medicine, is one of the most important decisions of a trainee doctor’s career. Despite this, there is scant literature on which factors influence trainees’ choices towards clinical work or academic research. As the MD/PhD is a relatively young training path compared to the traditional PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) and MD (Doctor of Medicine)programs, it prompts the question: at the crossroads of a career, what sways the individual to select an MD, PhD, or MD/PhD program? This is a valuable question to be answered for trainees who are considering multiple career paths, for educators who want to guide undifferentiated students, and for policy makers who develop and coordinate research programs.“Intellectual stimulation” is the most consistently identified personal value which draws trainees to academic medicine. Mentorship is linked strongly to success in the field. Conversely, long training periods, a lack of autonomy, and financial considerations are deterrents from a career in academic medicine. Insight into the decision-making process is provided by recent Canadian trainees in these respective fields, in a series of short interviews.

Citation

Tsoi, M., Teitge, B. D., Madan, C. R., & Francescutti, L. H. (2018). Personal values influencing career path in academic medicine: Perspectives of selected Canadian trainees. F1000Research, 5, Article 1903. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.9026.2

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 25, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Apr 25, 2018
• Publication Date: Apr 25, 2018
• Deposit Date: Nov 22, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 16, 2021
• Journal: F1000Research
• Electronic ISSN: 2046-1402
• Publisher: F1000Research
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 5
• Article Number: 1903
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.9026.2
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4930370
• Publisher URL: https://f1000research.com/articles/5-1903/v2
• Additional Information: Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Data associated with the article are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Zero "No rights reserved" data waiver (CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication).