Writing Together to Get AHEAD: an interprofessional boot camp to support scholarly writing in the health professions

Abstract

BackgroundWriting for publication is an integral skill for both sharing research findings and career advancement, yet many faculty lack expertise, support, and time to author scholarly publications. Health professions educators identified writing as an area in which a new educators’ academy could offer support.Case PresentationTo address this need, a writing task force was formed consisting of a librarian, a School of Medicine faculty member, and a School of Nursing faculty member. The task force launched two initiatives to motivate and support faculty writing and publication over two academic years. In the first year, a structured interprofessional “boot camp” consisting of a sequenced, modularized approach to manuscript completion was offered. In the second year, community building, in-person writing sessions, and incentives were added to the structured tasks. In year one, twenty participants enlisted in the boot camp, nine of whom completed a manuscript for submission by the end of the program. Qualitative feedback indicated potential improvements, which were put in place in the second program. In year two, twenty-eight participants enrolled, and eleven submitted thirteen manuscripts for publication by the end of the program.ConclusionsStructured tasks, frequent deadlines, and professional editorial assistance were highly valued by participants. Time remains a barrier for faculty seeking to complete manuscripts. As experts in many facets of the publication process, librarians are well positioned to partner with others to facilitate faculty and staff development in writing.

The Scholarship Circle: an introduction to writing for publication for nursing faculty

“…We also promoted the services and resources that exist through the Health Sciences Library to support nursing faculty in the scholarly writing process by having a research and education librarian, who is also the nursing liaison librarian, partner in teaching and facilitating the Scholarship Circle. As von Isenberg and colleagues note, librarians are supportive collaborators in the writing process since they already provide guidance on many aspects of the writing and publishing process, such as developing search strategies, conducting literature reviews, finding and selecting journals for publication, and using reference management tools [13]. Scholarship Circle participants consulted with the librarian during and after the course with requests for assistance with these aspects of writing.…”

“…In an effort to encourage junior and nontenure-track nursing faculty to consider writing for publication and participate more fully in scholarly activities, the Health Sciences Library and the College of Nursing at the Ohio State University collaborated on developing and implementing an online professional development course in the summer of 2016 called the Scholarship Circle. The course also provided an opportunity to teach participants about human and material resources that were available to faculty who were writing for publication, including library resources and librarian services, based on a collaborative model used regularly by liaison librarians in health sciences libraries [13–15]. This report describes the Scholarship Circle course, data collected from surveys, and results from a bibliographic analysis of participants’ publications.…”

Barriers to writing research papers and getting them published, as perceived by Turkish physicians – a cross sectional study

“…7 Writing-support programmes provided the necessary skills, motivation, and encouragement. 7,14 A surprising observation in the present study was that it was the residents, not associate professors or full professors or fellows, who were mostly the ones declaring that they had no interest in writing (p = 0.037), although in our practice, residents are the cornerstones in health care and bear most of the workload.…”

Academies in Health Professions Education: A Scoping Review

“…2,4,36,39,49 Besides the dearth in outcomes and impact studies, our scoping review revealed additional gaps in the published research, suggesting the following opportunities for future investigation. First, our review revealed the expansion of the academy model beyond medical schools, serving interprofessional campuses 36,39,40,52 and other health professions schools. Thus, there are opportunities for comparative study Figure 3 Results of a scoping review of the literature on academies in health professions education organized by a logic model framework, including resources provided to academies, activities undertaken by academies, output (i.e., number of products, services, and participants), outcomes (i.e., changes brought about by engagement with an academy), and impact (i.e., broader effect on the organization at large).…”