What is a Clinical Academic and how do you become one?
A clinical academic is someone who is qualified and trained in both medicine and science. We spend our lives balancing direct clinical care, original scientific research, and teaching and training the next generation in varying proportions.
This balance differs enormously across individuals, and usually changes throughout a career.
- For some, the ability to work in a scientific laboratory and conduct original research unencumbered by administrative or bureaucratic responsibilities is the main attraction.
听 - For others, it's the ability to go - both intellectually and practically in the course of a working day - from the lab bench to the bedside and back again. Still others will excel in clinical academic leadership and training and developing the next generation.
Every clinical academic has different motivations and enjoys different aspects of their work. But all are brought together by their tripartite commitment to clinical medicine, academic research plus teaching and training.
How do I become a Clinical Academic?
Becoming a clinical academic, self-evidently, requires some training in research.听 Most medical students will have been exposed to some aspects of clinical and perhaps pre-clinical ('basic science') research at medical school, perhaps through an intercalated degree or other undergraduate project.
This sort of experience is nothing more than a 'taster'; but like clinical 'tasters' in Foundation, this sort of experience can be incredibly helpful in enthusing people and often seeding the very first idea that an academic career might be for them.
The academic component of clinical academic training consists of three stages:
- The first 'predoctoral' stage consists of finding an interesting area of research and getting some early 'taster' experience in this area, perhaps acquiring preliminary data or even maybe publishing a paper or two. Undergraduate and Masters research projects and clinical research projects undertaken during the early stages of training are common examples of this type of predoctoral work.
- The second stage consists of undertaking a research degree (PhD or less commonly these days MD). The challenges include finding a supportive PhD supervisor, effective time and project management during the course of the PhD, and successfully reintegrating into clinical training at the end of the PhD.听
- The third and final stage of clinical academic training is postdoctoral work, sometimes known as 'clinician scientist training'. Often this involves moving away from the laboratory where you did your PhD, and sometimes involves overseas training.
What is a clinical academic training pathway?
Academic Clinical Fellowship (ACF) is the ideal way to gain early pre-doctoral research experience and to maximise your chances of long-term academic success, without compromising clinical training.
- ACFs will have the opportunity to gain experience of conducting short research projects or 鈥榯asters鈥� of life in an academic research laboratory and can undertake training in research methodology and academic skills.
- ACFs allow you to work within an academic department at 果冻影院 to develop a research project suitable for a PhD. This project should lead to a proposal for submission to an external funding body for a Clinical Research Training Fellowship
- The ultimate aim of each 3 year ACF programme (or 4 year for GP trainees) is to secure this type of funding to undertake a PhD.
- It is important to realise that ACF posts are preparatory for such an application, and the research component of each post at 果冻影院 is designed to maximise your chances of success through identifying a supervisor and project, providing help in constructing a successful application and subsequently transitioning to a full-time PhD.
- ACFs are flexible posts, and although the majority of candidates applying for such posts will be pre-doctoral, a minority will have a PhD already either in a related discipline (for example, through an MB-PhD programme or in an unrelated specialist area.
- Such trainees are also eligible to apply for an Academic Clinical Lectureship (CL) under current NIHR regulations. A postdoctoral trainee in an ACF post will follow the same course as a predoctoral trainee, but instead of developing a research project to secure a research training fellowship they will be expected to secure an appropriate postdoctoral fellowship.
Academic Clinical Lectureships are held by a post-doctoral trainee (i.e. with a completed PhD which has been awarded), usually already established within a particular academic and/or clinical field.
- CLs can be held for a maximum of 4 years and allow development of independent research. They usually lead to an application for a Clinician Scientist post or a university-funded Senior Lectureship link to CS/SCL webpage.
- CL has a greater percentage of time allocated to research (50%) and it is generally possible to conduct research in parallel with clinical training (unlike an ACF, where the research periods are preparatory and intended for collection of preliminary data).
- However, the posts do not provide funding for consumables or laboratory costs and so bespoke arrangements must be made for each Clinical Lecturer depending on their particular situation.
Clinician Scientist Fellowships (CSF) is a primarily research-orientated post held for a maximum of 5 years, either before or after CCT has been achieved. 鈥嬧赌嬧赌嬧赌嬧赌嬧赌嬧赌�
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