The Johns Hopkins Graduate Training Program in Clinical Investigation (GTPCI) was initiated in 1993 as a joint effort of the University's Schools of Medicine and Public Health. The Program has matriculated 82 physician-investigators over ten years into a year-long didactive curriculum which is then followed by at least two years of mentored clinical research leading to thesis publication and the award of either an MSc or PhD degree. We now propose with continuing NIH K-30 support to provide enhanced administrative, mentoring, and curriculum structures for this model program, and to evaluate its success in generating productive career investigators. Enhanced features include expansion of curriculum elements, including Web-based learning; extension of the core curriculum to a broader audience including faculty and postdoctoral fellows; formal appraisal of educational outcomes; enhancement of minority recruitment and trainee retention; and enrichment experiences in clinical investigation for faculty and the entire clinical research community. The long-term objective of this project is to strengthen, enhance, and evaluate a model for training superior clinical investigators, with which we already have gained considerable experience, and to extend some of its benefits to a broader group of clinical investigators both within and external to Johns Hopkins.
The specific aims are: (1) to sustain and enhance an administrative and curriculum structure for the ongoing GTPCI; (2) to evaluate the success of the GTPCI model and related programs in generating successful career investigators; and (3) to provide shorter term curricula in aspects of clinical investigation to a broader group of postdoctoral fellows, faculty and active clinical investigators both within and external to Johns Hopkins. We .expect that these enhancements and extensions will heighten the visibility, effectiveness and success of future careers in clinical investigation at our institution.
