Launching a new fellowship for medical students: The first years of the Doris Duke Clinical Research Fellowship Program

Elaine K. Gallin, Sylvie M. Le Blancq, Donald W. Landry, Dennis Ausiello, Ravi Thadhani, Karen Zier, Steven Itzkowitz, Joel Palefsky, Peggy Nopoulos, Paul B. Watkins, Susan Pusek, Anil K. Rustgi, Josh Metlay, Michael McPhaul, Abhimanyu Garg, Michael R. DeBaun, John N. Forrest

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

29 Scopus citations

Abstract

As part of its commitment to increasing the pipeline of physicians pursuing careers in clinical research, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation launched the Doris Duke Clinical Research Fellowship (CRF) Program for medical students in 2000. The program, which is based at 10 US medical schools, provides medical students from any US medical school with the opportunity to spend 1 year obtaining both didactic and "hands-on" mentored clinical research experience. This article describes the program and summarizes the early outcomes collected during the first 3.5 years of the program. Interest in the program among medical students has been robust and widespread, with 35% of CRF program fellows matriculated at non-CRF schools. Exit surveys of the first three classes of fellows totaling 174 fellows indicated that (1) 97% of the fellows felt that participating in the fellowship was a good decision; (2) commitment to a career in clinical research was increased among the 44% of fellows reporting that they were unsure about pursuing a clinical research career when they began their fellowship; (3) there was no difference in satisfaction level between the fellows who remained at the medical schools in which they were matriculated and those who completed their fellowship at a medical school in which they were not matriculated; and (4) the majority of fellows responded that the didactic component of their fellowship was useful.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)73-81
Number of pages9
JournalJournal of Investigative Medicine
Volume53
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2005

Keywords

  • Clinical research
  • Mentors
  • Physician-scientists

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

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