New medical school will train physician-investigators. (Developed to Mitigate Shortage).

Are you an accomplished, enthusiastic physician-investigator who can inspire medical students to chase their dream of advancing biomedical research and clinical practice?

If so, you might fit the bill to be a guest lecturer for students on the first day of an innovative medical school: the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. The school is slated to open in July 2004.

"On the first day of school, I want the students to meet someone who is an incredibly charismatic physician-investigator to talk to them about what they do and how they got to where they are, and what excites them about it," said Dr. Lindsey Henson, vice dean for education and academic affairs at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU).

The goal of the new 'college is to educate medical doctors who intend to devote their careers to patient-oriented clinical research, a segment of medical science that has experienced serious growth problems for more than 30 years, said Dr. David Korn, senior vice president of the division of biomedical and health sciences research at the Association of American Medical Colleges in Washington. Indeed, the Institute of Medicine estimates that less than 2% of physicians are adequately prepared to perform clinical research.

In the report of its 1999 Clinical Research Summit project, the AAMC called this deficit "a bottleneck that would severely impede the translation of headline-grabbing advancements in basic biomedical research into public benefit through new diagnostics, treatments, and preventive strategies."

If the goal of the new college is met, "it will represent a significant contribution toward mitigating this vexing problem," Dr. Korn said.

In an agreement reached in May 2002, physicians and scientists at CWRU and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation will work together to develop a 5-year curriculum that prepares students for careers as clinical investigators and physician-scientists. While some medical schools offer clinical research experience in students' third and fourth years, this curriculum will devote nearly 2 years to basic science and clinical skills learning objectives, followed by 3 years of clerkships, elective clinical and noncinical rotations, and research projects based on a thesis each student develops.