Background:

Emphasis is shifting from the simple justification of hospital medicine to identifying/implementing steps enabling it to move more solidly into academia. Establishing a robust fundable research base — allowing for diversity in funding and career paths — is essential for successful growth.

Purpose:

To describe an innovative program to accelerate research capacity building in junior faculty in an academic hospitalist program.

Description:

Hard funds were made available by the dean of the SOM for establishing 4 master teacher positions across the medical school. The first master teacher was allocated to the hospital medicine division. An experienced clinical researcher with a solid track record in obtaining extramural funding was recruited (50% capacity building; 50% patient care). This individual was experienced in teaching grant writing to doctoral‐level students and junior medical faculty. A baseline needs assessment was conducted. Priorities identified included; equipping junior faculty with skill sets that included grant writing/study design/implementation, data management/analysis, manuscript preparation/submission/publication. Identified domains for research included clinical trials, health services, and information and management sciences. Following the needs assessment, nearly all 20 members of our hospitalist division agreed to participate in master teacher‐led monthly research seminars that involve reviewing of successful and unsuccessful NIH grants, presenting possible research ideas, the key role of pilot studies, hurdles encountered and how they were overcome, appropriate study designs, and data collection instruments. Monthly faculty presentations are associated with an in‐depth critical review of 2‐3 important and relevant research articles in the peer‐reviewed medical literature with an emphasis on study design and data analysis. The research seminar format is very interactive.

Conclusions:

For hospitalist medicine to become thoroughly integrated into academic medicine, a cadre of skilled clinicians must be equipped with tools to ask appropriate and fundable research questions, identify robust and feasible study designs, secure extramural funding to conduct research and publish in the highest‐impact journals. We believe this will happen most expeditiously and effectively through the master teacher model with emphasis on hands‐on mentoring. Our program may serve as a useful model for similar academic programs encountering similar challenges.

Author Disclosure:

R. Ryder, none; G. Maynard, none.