Chair and Associate Professor Research and Biostatistics
Background: When the new Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine developed its curriculum in 2017, it included a mandatory one-month scholarly activity rotation during students’ 3rd-year clinical clerkships. The intended purpose of the rotation is to familiarize students with the research process and to give them a chance to start a project of their own. The 3rd year students are spread around the country, so this course is taught online and is mostly asynchronous.
Description: Responsibility for developing and teaching the research rotation fell to the Chair of Research and Biostatistics and the Director of Library Services. The primary challenge was deciding how to distill the research process into just four weeks, especially since the students have had limited exposure to literature searching, research methodology, biostatistics, and scholarly communication skills up to this point. We decided to build the rotation around the goal of preparing the students to have a small-scale research project ready once they enter their residency programs. Assignments build upon each other starting with topic choice and a literature review and moving on to filling out an IRB application form and submitting a detailed research protocol. The final projects include a research manuscript or a case report, a research poster, and a 3-minute lightning talk.
Conclusion: The first session of the research rotation started in July 2020 and 149 students will go through one of 11 sessions by June 2021. We hope to find that by going through this research rotation, students are less intimidated by the idea of engaging in research and are more likely to pursue scholarly activity projects in the future.
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