Growing the Next Generation of Trauma Surgeon Scientists – Reflections on 20 Years of Research Investment

Abstract

INTRODUCTION:The Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma mission includes fostering research and providing career development opportunities. Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma has awarded for 20 years a research scholarship to a promising young investigator. The research mentorship efforts were expanded 5 years ago with the INVEST-C Hack-a-thon. INVEST-C provides an intensive, short-term engagement to propel junior faculty toward establishing research independence. This study investigates the impact of these programs on academic productivity. METHODS: Pubmed records, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Reporter data, and SCOPUS h-index were acquired for all scholarship (SCH) awardees from 2002 to 2021 (n = 20) and all INVEST-C (INV) participants (2017-2020, n = 19). Current type of practice, total number of funding awards, and timing of first award were ascertained. INVEST-C participants were also surveyed on an annual basis to track their progress. Medians (interquartile range [IQR]) are reported and compared (analysis of variance). RESULTS:Median publications (PUBs) of SCH awardees were 56 (IQR, 33-88), h-index was 16 (IQR, 12-21), and 25% of awardees have ≥1 NIH grant since their SCH. Among the last 10 awardees with a minimum of 2 years from SCH, 40% have received an NIH award compared with a mean NIH funding rate of 18.5% over the same period. For those remaining in academics (90% SCH), PUBs were higher for those >5 years (66 [IQR,) versus <5 years from their ; p = 0.05), but there was no difference in h-index (16 [IQR, 14-25] vs. 15 [9-19], p = NS). Comparing the most recent 5 years of SCH to INV group, there was no difference in academic productivity as measured by total PUBs (SCH, 33 [IQR, vs. INV, 34 [IQR,; p = 0.7) or h-index (INV, 9 [IQR,(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14); p = 0.1). However, no attendee held research funding before INV, but 31.6% (6 of 19 attendees) have subsequently acquired ≥1 funding award (11 non-NIH, 1 NIH) in the short interval since participation. CONCLUSION:Investments in research activities have translated to significant extramural funding. Those in the last 5 years have been particularly fruitful with INV participants already achieving equal median academic productivity to SCH recipients.

The First Generative AI Prompt-A-Thon in Healthcare: A Novel Approach to Workforce Engagement with a Private Instance of ChatGPT

“…There were 1944 prompts submitted from 9AM-4PM, predominantly concentrated within the two hours of our workshop portion (12:30PM–2:30PM) where 1310 prompts (67.4%) were submitted. The mean rate of prompt submission was 10.9 prompts/minute with a max of 26 prompts/minute, median [IQR] of 10.5 [ 7 – 15 ] per minute. These rates were substantially below our imposed requests per minute limit of 360 for GPT-4 8k.…”

“…These results support the notion that crowd events like hackathons can foster positive participant attitudes and accelerate innovation. [ 9 ] Callcut et al discussed how these events can foster networking with domain experts and accelerate academic productivity, [ 15 ] which aligns with the enthusiasm demonstrated by participants after the lightning talks by experts in the field and their enhanced willingness to disseminate excitement about and utilization of GenAI across the health system.…”

“…[ 3 , 9 – 19 ] For example, a hackathon for junior surgical physician-scientists exemplified how these events can foster innovation by accelerating academic productivity. [ 15 ] Furthermore, Aboab et al reported that incorporating actual healthcare data into these workshops led to the development of decision support tools and novel research directly applicable to real-world tasks. [ 10 ] Others have showcased how these events equip participants with transferable skills relevant to their daily work [ 16 ], but to realize post-event success, organizers must ensure participating teams are diverse in their demographic attributes and technical capabilities.…”

“…[ 10 ] Others have showcased how these events equip participants with transferable skills relevant to their daily work [ 16 ], but to realize post-event success, organizers must ensure participating teams are diverse in their demographic attributes and technical capabilities. [ 15 ] Healthcare hackathons which promote GenAI utilization with real-world data [ 5 ] and involve a diverse community [ 15 ] thus have the potential to educate early adopters, upskill an entire workforce, and revolutionize patient care.…”