Nationwide, dermatology departments enroll annually over 300 young physicians interested in becoming dermatologists. The majority of these individuals represent the cream of their medical school class. After three years of residency training, most of them leave the university to begin a successful private practice. Why do these young dermatologists walk away from academics and dermatological research? Somehow, academic careers in dermatological research must be made more attractive to these young individuals. They wish to focus their efforts in testing one hypothesis: that early exposure of young trainees to leading national research figures and successful young physician-scientists and diffusion of information about research careers may have a positive influence in their career decisions. The long-term objective of this meeting is to increase the pool of physician-scientists in dermatology. To meet this goal they will follow these steps: 1. Select a small group of first-year dermatology residents interested in biomedical research. 2. Provide this group with information on biomedical research careers in dermatology, including a directory of postdoctoral research sites. 3. Introduce young residents to leaders and successful young physician-scientists of the Society for Investigative Dermatology, the National Institutes of Health, the Dermatology Foundation and to patient advocacy leaders in an informal atmosphere. 4. Facilitate the career-decision-process for future dermatology physician-scientists. 5. Prepare a database with names of the selected resident for future outcome studies.
| Pentland, Alice (2013) Building social and scientific networks to grow our global skin biology community. J Invest Dermatol 133:2497-2499 |
