Publication Impact of Addiction Clinician-Scientist Fellowship

This study evaluated the impact of an addiction medicine research fellowship. As such, the evaluation here has the potential to radically change addiction medicine clinician-researcher training.

Clinician-scientists serve to bridge the gap between addiction research and clinical practice but cultivating these clinician-scientists who are able to publish clinical research remains a challenge.

Objective. To determine if a one-year structured fellowship program for addiction medicine physicians would lead to increased rates of publication.

Design. A non-randomized controlled trial.

Setting. A Canadian academic hospital.

Participants. The study sample was drawn from those physicians who applied to a part-time, one-year addiction research immersion training program. Of the 8 top-ranked individuals from the 11 applicants, 4 were selected to participate in the training program and another 4 were designated to serve as a comparison group. Participants were compensated for their time.

Intervention. The addiction research immersion training program consisted of 3 half-days per week of addiction research training, 2 half-days per week of longitudinal research methods training, and 3 half-days per week of mentored publication and grant development. The control group continued in their usual clinical practice.

Main outcome measure. Number of first-author publications at the end of the one-your fellowship.

At the end of the one-year fellowship, the 4 fellows published 7 papers and the controls published 1 paper; however, this difference was not statistically significant.

These preliminary results suggest that a structured clinical-research training program could lead to an increased rate of publications.