Personal values influencing career path in academic medicine

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 trainees in these respective fields, as well as experienced academic clinicians. Braden D. Teitge ( ) Corresponding author: [email protected] Tsoi M, Teitge BD, Madan CR and Francescutti LH. How to cite this article: Personal values influencing career path in academic medicine 2016, :1903 (doi: ) [version 1; referees: 2 approved with reservations] F1000Research 5 10.12688/f1000research.9026.1 © 2016 Tsoi M . This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the , which Copyright: et al Creative Commons Attribution Licence permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The author(s) declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work. Grant information: Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed. 02 Aug 2016, :1903 (doi: ) First published: 5 10.12688/f1000research.9026.1 1 2 3