Re-engineering the Clinical Research Enterprise

Clinical Research Training

Overview

Our nation‘s ability to fully explore the ever-expanding opportunities for medical advances are limited only by our resources, the most important of which is the scientific workforce. To fulfill the promise of 21st century medicine and to make further progress in controlling major human diseases, we must cultivate and train a cadre of clinical researchers with skills that match the increasing complexity and needs of the research enterprise.

The clinical research workforce must be large enough to facilitate bench-to-bedside research, the phased testing of approaches from small to large studies and the translation of proven concepts into medical practice at the community level. Clinicians must be trained to work in the interdisciplinary, team-oriented environments that characterize today‘s emerging research efforts. Clinical researchers need to be trained in an array of disciplines important to the conduct of clinical studies, including epidemiology, behavioral medicine, and patient-oriented research.

This NIH Roadmap supports the Multidisciplinary Clinical Research Career Development Program, the Clinical and Translational Science awards (CTSA) that expand and enhance the clinical research workforce, and a clinical research training program for medical and dental students.

Multidisciplinary Research Career Development Program. This supports the early career development of clinical researchers from a variety of disciplines, including patient oriented research, translational research, small and large scale clinical investigation and trials, and epidemiologic and natural history studies. The program funds doctoral level professionals to learn how best to design and oversee research in multidisciplinary, collaborative team settings. As such, these researchers will have a high potential for becoming leaders of various fields of clinical research critical to the NIH mission. These research career development grants include a broad representation of clinical disciplines and professions (e.g., internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics/gynecology, dentistry, pharmacy, epidemiology, nursing, and bioengineering) and the various specialties and sub specialties within each of these areas. The program has been expanded and subsumed under the Clinical and Translational Science Award as a mandated key component awarding Master’s and doctoral degrees in clinical research. This program is more fully described under: http://www.ncrr.nih.gov/clinical_research_resources/clinical_and_translational_science_awards/index.asp.

Predoctoral Clinical Research Training Program. The program provides clinical research experience or training for students interested in clinical research careers. The early exposure of predoctoral students of medicine, dentistry, nursing, and other allied health fields to research training provides an efficient entry into clinical research careers. The Predoctoral Clinical Research Training Program offers access for interested students to clinical research training that is appropriate to their career stage and level of interest, and can accommodate their changing training needs as they progress through predoctoral training. The program has been expanded and subsumed under the Clinical and Translational Science Award as an optional key component providing a range of experiences, including core didactic components, summer or short research experiences, and an intensive year-long clinical research training program. This program is more fully described under: http://www.ncrr.nih.gov/clinical_research_resources/clinical_and_translational_science_awards/index.asp.

NIH Clinical Research Training Program. The NIH Clinical Research Training Program (CRTP) is a 12-month, residential program designed to attract the most creative, research-oriented medical and dental students to the intramural campus of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. It is a public-private partnership established in 1997 and supported jointly by the NIH and a grant to the Foundation for NIH from Pfizer Inc. In 2004 the CRTP doubled in size from 15 to 30 fellows annually, thanks to the support of the NIH Roadmap initiative, and has maintained this level subsequently.

Participants, known as fellows, spend a year engaged in a mentored clinical or translational research project in an area that matches their personal research interests and goals. One of the overall goals of the CRTP is to provide a training experience for the next generation of clinician-scientist to learn about translational research, that first step from the bench to the bedside and back to the bench. An individualized program is developed for fellows, who attend clinics, see patients on the wards, and work with a principal investigator in NIH laboratories on clinical and translational research projects. CRTP fellows attend lectures on clinical research and they participate in an interactive, group learning experience with the members of the class and leading NIH physicians and scientists.

The NIH CRTP also co-hosts an annual Clinical Investigator Student Trainee (CIST) Forum at the NIH for medical and dental students participating in clinical and translational research fellowships (“year-out” programs) at academic medical centers across the country. The goal of the CIST Forum is to enhance the development of a community of emerging clinician-scientists, to feature recent advances in clinical and translational research, to teach networking skills, and to provide career development resources. For more information regarding the CRTP, please visit the following website: http://www.cc.nih.gov/training/crtp/crtp.html.

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