The Academy of Medical Sciences- helping clinical academics achieve their potential

The Academy of Medical Sciences is the independent body in the UK representing the whole spectrum of medical science. Our mission is to promote advances in medical science and campaign to ensure these are converted into healthcare benefits for society.

Developing the leaders of tomorrow

One of the Academy’s strategic goals is to develop the next generation of leading global medical researchers. After the Academy’s establishment in 1998, our first piece of work set out to address the decrease in medical trainees pursuing a career in academic medicine. This culminated in the publication of the report ‘The Tenured Track Clinician Scientist: a new career pathway to promote recruitment into academic medicine’1 in 2001. A significant outcome of the report was the creation of the Clinician Scientist Fellowship (CSF) scheme, which provides protected research time to post-doctoral clinical academics. This prestigious scheme has been established across a number of funders, medical research charities and pharmaceutical companies. The Academy partnered with The Health Foundation to award three rounds of Clinician Scientist Fellowships, focussing on boosting capacity in the ‘vulnerable’ clinical academic specialties, for example, pathology, radiology and surgery. Mr Peter Hutchinson, one of the authors, was one of the first cohort of fellows funded through the Academy’s scheme.

Since the development of the CSF scheme, funders have developed a number of initiatives aimed at revitalising the clinical academic workforce, including the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Integrated Academic Training Pathway (IATP) scheme, as described in the previous issue of ACNR. The Academy has also developed two new funding schemes to provide opportunities to aspiring medical researchers, outlined in Figure 1.

Support through mentorship

An academic career brings challenges, opportunities and rewards. However, many individuals are still in clinical training when they embark on a research career and therefore must fulfil multiple and often competing lines for reporting and assessment. Coping with the demands of working within a highly specialised, competitive and fiercely intellectual culture, while also maintaining a work/life balance brings significant challenges.

Thanks to the efforts of funders, the number of doctors embarking on clinical academic training and pursuing a longer-term academic career continues to grow. In striving to develop innovative ways to support these individuals and respond to the increasing numbers of clinical academics across the training grades the Academy has developed a UK-wide mentoring and outreach scheme. Our portfolio of activities promotes academic medicine to medical students and clinicians in training, and offers support and guidance to individuals as they embark on the academic pathway and progress to become established clinical academics. The range of activities offered are outlined below and in Figure 2.

One to one Mentoring

Mentors act as role models, inspiring mentees and providing practical advice on how to navigate the clinical academic pathway and meet both research and clinical aspirations. The independence and expertise of Academy mentors enables the dialogue between mentor and mentee to focus on longer term aims as well as day-to-day challenges. Mentors may also act as a signpost to information and resources including people and networks. Crucially, however, skilful mentoring requires that mentors are mindful of staying outside of the mentee’s management relationships and their educational and research supervision.

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The strength and uniqueness of the Academy’s one to one mentoring scheme, is the access trainees have to our pool of medical research leaders. Our mentors span the breadth of medical science, and, as they are located across the UK, aspiring clinical academics or ‘mentees’ are able to gain personalised, confidential and independent advice from a senior figure outside their institution, specialty and even area of research. For the post-doctoral clinical academic, working towards an independent career, this source of additional support can prove invaluable.

‘It is very clear to me that the input of an impartial mentor would be of strong value now. I have been using local mentors in the university so far, which has worked well for my research, but now I am needing to consider advice on longer aims and direction which, I believe, is more difficult for these local mentors to provide impartially.’ Clinician Scientist Fellow

To support mentors we run a rolling programme of mentor development workshops targeted at Academy Fellows, but the invitation to participate is extended to other senior clinical academics and representatives from institutionally-based mentoring schemes. Workshop participants are introduced to key mentoring topics and given the opportunity to explore issues such as the varying roles of supervisor and mentor, confidentiality and career transitions.

The mentoring scheme started in 2002 and numbers involved in the scheme have steadily grown; the Academy currently supports 200 mentee-mentor pairs.

Buddy group scheme

In addition to the one to one mentoring, we are currently piloting a peer mentoring ‘buddy group’ scheme. This new initiative draws together small groups of pre-doctoral trainees (Academic Clinical Fellows, Clinical Training Fellows and MB PhD students) supported by a more senior trainee. The groups provide a forum for trainees to discuss career development and share ideas and experiences. There has been a good response to this new scheme from trainees, and 28 groups have now been set up regionally.

‘It was great to hear everyone’s stories about the specific difficulties they had come up against, as well as all the things they had managed to achieve, and to get tailored advice on how to manage all this. I am very grateful that we have all been put in touch like this.’ Peer mentoring group member

Regional workshops and events

We also provide trainees with a programme of regional workshops and events. Our regional activities link to local mentoring schemes and provide opportunities for trainees to network with senior colleagues and peers. They also provide a forum for knowledge transfer and encourage debate on issues around training, funding and professional development. These events provide trainees with opportunities to:

● Understand how to use mentoring.

● Hear from funders about fellowships and grants.

● Learn about policy developments.

● Engage in open debate.

● Hear inspirational talks.

● Establish effective networks amongst peers and colleagues.

Details of forthcoming events can be found at http://www.acmedsci.ac.uk/p148.html.

Information resources

We continue to develop a range of resources and materials to support our scheme. These include an email bulletin, which goes out to over 1500 trainees, and a practical toolkit of mentoring tips which is published on our academic careers website: www.academicmedicine.ac.uk.

The Academy hopes that the portfolio of support it offers will create a cohort effect amongst clinical academics, reducing isolation and maximising support and collaboration [1].

The Academy is very grateful to the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and NHS Education for Scotland (NES) for funding the Mentoring and Outreach Scheme, and to The Health Foundation, Wellcome Trust and The Daniel Turnberg Trust who financially support the Academy’s funding schemes. If you would like further information about any of the activities outlined above, please email mentoring@acmedsci.ac.uk or visit www.acmedsci.ac.uk/p25.html.

1. The Academy of Medical Sciences (2000). The Tenured Track Clinician Scientist: a new career pathway to promote recruitment into academic medicine, www.acmedsci.ac.uk/p99puid29.html