Current translational medicine fails to sufficiently bridge the gap between bench and bedside. This results in a tremendous waste in research investments and numerous biomedical innovations that never reach the bedside. There is broad consensus that clinician-scientists (doctors/surgeons with a full scientific training) hold the key to bridge this gap. However, the number of clinician-scientists is declining due to the failure to retain them in the academic and industrial workforce. The three main sources of this problem are the lack of established career pathways for clinician-scientists, the limited possibilities for integration of clinical and scientific skills and lack of awareness amongst stakeholders of the added value of clinician-scientists. The first objective of this Strategic Partnership is to create efficient, sustainable and attractive career pathways for clinician-scientists, including the development and implementation of a mentorship program. The second objective is to integrate research and clinical components in the training of clinician-scientists. This will be achieved by the development and implementation of two innovative online educational building blocks: 1) An online course on 21st century skills which provides the clinician-scientists with tools to integrate clinical and research values and skills during their training, 2) Educhallenge based on an existing issue from the industrial partners that will be solved in collaboration with the patient organization. The third objective is to generate impact by raising awareness amongst stakeholders throughout Europe (including policy makers and regulators) of the added value of clinician-scientists in bridging the gap between bench and bedside. This will be achieved by the development of a stakeholder communication toolbox ensuring targeted and efficient ways of disseminating the results of the PATHWAY project to relevant stakeholders in Europe. The project partners are spread over Europe in different geographical areas and are an excellent representation of the academic stakeholders in Europe. Together with the active participation of a large international industrial partner, a patient organization and an expert non-governmental organization the consortium is well equipped to effectively address the three objectives of the PATHWAY project and to achieve the long-term goal of the project: bridging the gap between bench and bedside by retaining clinician-scientists for the academic and industrial workforce.
The consortium applied for an Erasmus+ KA2 grant, to help bridge the gap between bench and bedside as all partners believe that current medicine fails to do so. For decades, concerns have been raised about the large amount of biomedical research that ends up in the so-called “Valley of Death”: the gap between biomedical research and its clinical application. There is broad consensus that clinician-scientists hold the key to bridge this gap. However, these clinician-scientists are working under extremely high pressure as they are expected to juggle their clinical and research duties simultaneously. The Pathway consortium assessed that the key to this complex problem is not to focus on clinician-scientists solely. To better align biomedical research with clinical needs and allow for translation of discoveries to clinical practice, we need improved collaboration between all disciplines within the translational process. Thus, the consortium broadened the target group and focused on ‘translational-scientists’ instead - so researchers with a clear interest in clinical research and clinician-scientists. In order to attract and retain translational-scientists in the academic workforce, the consortium has set the following objectives: 1. Creating efficient, sustainable and attractive career pathways for translational-scientists, in order to support and retain them as key players in the advancement of translational medicine. This objective has been met by writing an article about the current working life of translational-scientists. This article contains in-depth interviews with translational-scientists from nine different countries and aims to give an overview of what it means to work in the complex field of translational medicine and the determination it takes to be successful. After finishing our project, a PhD student at UMC Utrecht will continue to work on career possibilities for translational-scientists. 2. Innovating translational-scientist extracurricular education to provide them with tools to successfully combine both clinical and research tasks, including the development and implementation of a mentorship programme. To achieve this, the consortium built an international online course for translational-scientists that will be used as preparation for the Pathway mentorship programme. During the lifetime of the project, approximately 70 students were invited to join this course. At the end of the course, each mentee was matched with a mentor and the (online) Pathway mentorship programme started. In total, we recruited more than 40 international mentors through our associated partner, the Eureka Institute. During our dissemination activities, the consortium received great interest in our mentorship programme by renowned world experts in the field. For this reason, we wrote an implementation handbook which aims to guide institutions that want to offer an adapted version of the programme. After the lifetime of the project, the mentorship programme and online course will be taken over by the Eureka institute. Eureka will also make them available to all her partners and has expressed the ambition that in the future 1000 mentees and mentors will join the mentorship programme. Besides an online course and mentorship programme, we also created an educational challenge (educhallenge) which focusses on perspective taking, a professional development portfolio, and ‘user’ mentorship handbook. Lastly, we defined the first set of Entrustable Professional Activities for translational scientists that can become a hallmark of their educational training. 3. Generating impact by raising awareness amongst all stakeholders throughout Europe of the added value of clinician-scientists in bridging the gap between bench and bedside. The consortium noticed there is no consensus within Europe regarding the term ‘clinician-scientist’. For this reason, a letter to the editor was written which clarifies the profile of a clinician-scientist and unifies all terminologies. In this letter we raise awareness for the role of clinician-scientists and bring attention to the Pathway deliverables. This awareness is now more important than ever as the COVID-19 pandemic has proven the need for translational-scientists beyond a shadow of a doubt. This way, we aim to increase visibility for these young professionals and ensure that other institutes can also better support them. The project is unique in that it offers tailor made tools to support the careers of translational-scientists and specific targeted educational products. Although we achieved our objectives, the consortium stresses that we need to continue to build on the results of the Pathway project. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates the need to develop pan-European educational tools to support translational-scientists.