Center for the Health Sciences Interprofessional Education

The TL1 Multidisciplinary Predoctoral Clinical Research Training Program is sponsoring a short-term summer research experience for 12 predoctoral students in the Schools of Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Public Health and Social Work. This National Institutes of Health sponsored program will fund predoctoral students in the target professions with an opportunity to conduct an original research project as part of an overall skill for lifelong professional learning*. The program focuses on enabling students to work with a multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary team who are conducting clinical research in the laboratory, in clinical agencies or in the community.

Summer trainees will receive a stipend for the three month period, a small allowance for the costs of their research project, and are expected to enroll for a weekly clinical research seminar. They are also required to attend the Summer Quarter Biomedical Research Integrity Series Lectures as well as the follow-up lecture discussion groups.

Clinical research is defined by the NIH as comprised of patient-oriented research, in which the investigator interacts with human research participants, epidemiologic and behavioral studies, and studies of outcomes and health services delivery are also considered clinical research. Laboratory studies can be clinical research if they involve specimens or materials of human origin. Because such studies require the expertise from multiple disciplines and clinical professions, we are emphasizing student experiences with multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary teams of established investigators.

In order to get the most from this experience you will need to identify and work with a faculty mentor to develop and implement your proposed project.

Generate questions related to clinical practice and use clinical research methods to solve them.
Critically read, evaluate, and synthesize existing research and generate a scientific clinical research question
Collect, analyze and manage data in a defined area, under supervision.
Prepare a scientific abstract regarding the results of the project.
Practice scientific presentation skills in the form of a poster presentation. Scholarly papers summarizing the results of your project may be submitted to fulfill requirements in individual Schools at a later date.
Participate in training in protection of human subjects (including review of the history of abuses of human subjects, the ethical principles, regulatory oversight, informed consent, risk-benefit evaluations, equitable selection of subjects, and examples of case studies in research ethics).
Evaluate ethical issues facing beginning clinical investigators around collaborative studies, authorship, data quality and integrity, protection of human subjects, conflict of interest.