Kools Farah R W, Fox Christine M, Prakken Berent J, van Rijen Harold V M
Center of Education and Training, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands.
Front Med (Lausanne). 2023 May 5;10:1109297. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2023.1109297. eCollection 2023.
Translational research is a subfield of the biomedical life sciences that focuses on clinically driven healthcare innovations. The workforce of this subfield, i.e., translational researchers, are diversely specialized and collaborate with a multitude of stakeholders from diverse disciplines in and outside academia in order to navigate the complex path of translating unmet clinical needs into research questions and ultimately into advancements for patient care. Translational researchers have varying responsibilities in the clinical, educational, and research domains requiring them to split their time two- or three-ways. Working between these domains and alongside peers who do not split their time as such, raises questions about the academic reward system used to recognize their performance, which mainly focuses on publication metrics within the research domain. What is unclear is how combining research tasks with tasks in the clinical and/or educational domains effects translational researchers and how they navigate the academic reward system.
In this exploratory interview study, semi-structured interviews were conducted to gain a deeper understanding of the current academic reward system for translational researchers. Stratified purposeful sampling was used to recruit 14 translational researchers from varying countries, subspecialties, and career stages. The interviews were coded after data collection was complete and arranged into three overarching result categories: intrinsic motivation, extrinsic factors, and ideal academic reward system and advice.
We found that these 14 translational researchers were intrinsically motivated to achieve their translational goals while working in settings where clinical work was reported to take priority over teaching which in turn took priority over time for research. However, it is the latter that was explained to be essential in the academic reward system which currently measures scientific impact largely based on publications metrics.
In this study, translational researchers were asked about their thoughts regarding the current academic reward system. Participants shared possible structural improvements and ideas for specialized support on an individual, institutional, and also international level. Their recommendations focused on acknowledging all aspects of their work and led to the conclusion that traditional quantitative academic reward metrics do not fully align with their translational goals.
转化研究是生物医学生命科学的一个子领域，专注于以临床为导向的医疗创新。该子领域的从业人员，即转化研究人员，专业背景多样，他们与学术界内外来自不同学科的众多利益相关者合作，以便在将未满足的临床需求转化为研究问题并最终转化为患者护理进步的复杂道路上前行。转化研究人员在临床、教育和研究领域有着不同的职责，这要求他们将时间分成两部分或三部分。在这些领域之间工作，以及与没有这样分配时间的同行一起工作，引发了关于用于认可他们表现的学术奖励系统的问题，该系统主要侧重于研究领域内的发表指标。尚不清楚的是，将研究任务与临床和/或教育领域的任务相结合如何影响转化研究人员，以及他们如何应对学术奖励系统。
在这项探索性访谈研究中，我们进行了半结构化访谈，以更深入地了解当前针对转化研究人员的学术奖励系统。采用分层目的抽样法，从不同国家、亚专业和职业阶段招募了14名转化研究人员。数据收集完成后对访谈进行编码，并归纳为三个总体结果类别：内在动机、外在因素以及理想的学术奖励系统与建议。
我们发现，这14名转化研究人员在临床工作被认为优先于教学、教学又优先于研究时间的环境中工作时，具有实现其转化目标的内在动力。然而，后者在当前主要基于发表指标来衡量科学影响力的学术奖励系统中被认为是至关重要的。
在本研究中，我们询问了转化研究人员对当前学术奖励系统的看法。参与者分享了在个人、机构以及国际层面上可能的结构改进和专门支持的想法。他们的建议侧重于认可其工作的各个方面，并得出结论：传统的定量学术奖励指标与他们的转化目标并不完全一致。
