Open AccessPerformance report for a 10-year-old MD/PhD Program: A survey of trainees at the University of Ottawa
Author(s) -
Adam Pietrobon,
Lucia Chehadé,
Alexandra Beaudry-Richard,
Brian A. Keller,
Michael G. Schlossmacher
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
clinical and investigative medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.391
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1488-2353
pISSN - 0147-958X
DOI - 10.25011/cim.v43i2.33955
Subject(s) - mentorship , respondent , diversity (politics) , medical education , advice (programming) , descriptive statistics , psychology , career planning , medicine , political science , computer science , mathematics , statistics , law , programming language
Purpose: Integrated MD/PhD programs are relatively new in Canada and represent a platform to train the next generation of clinician-scientists. However, MD/PhD programs vary substantially by structure, funding and mentorship opportunities, and there exists a paucity of data on the overall students’ successes and challenges. The purpose of this study is to assess objective and subjective metrics of the MD/PhD Program at the University of Ottawa.
Methods: Students in all years of the program were invited to complete a 58- question survey, and the resulting data were analyzed by descriptive statistics.
Results: Our survey had an 88.5% (23/26) participation rate. The program has been gaining interest and the number of applications increased by 178% between 2013 and 2018. Tuition support was considered an essential element in
accepting the admission offer, as 47.8% of students would have declined admission without full tuition coverage. The MD/PhD students were heavily engaged in scholarly activities, with an average of 8.3 presentations/ publications per respondent. Respondents indicated low satisfaction with formal career planning advice (28.6% satisfied/very satisfied) and program transition guidance (22.2%). When delivered informally by peers, both career planning advice and program transition guidance were experienced as more satisfying (65.2% and 63.6%, respectively). Only 34.8% of survey respondents identified as female, highlighting the challenge of achieving diversity in clinician-scientist training programs.
Conclusion: Our report contributes to the body of knowledge on concrete obstacles experienced by students within MD/PhD programs and key areas that can be improved upon—locally, provincially and nationally—to further advance student success.