M.D./Ph.D. Directors Association

Working Group 1: Director Membership

Purpose: To identify benefits to MD-PhD programs and their directors/staff from joining a national director's organization.

1. Survey of all US and Canadian medical schools regarding:
a. Availability and content of their MD-PhD program; what special features does the program have.
b. # of students in the program.
c. # of applicants/accepts/matriculants.
d. This information will help us and the NIH and private funding agencies define the size and quality of the national pool of potential MD-PhD trainees. This will be very useful in planning for future expansions of MD-PhD programs nationally and convincing private agencies that we have a case for their support. Another job for the AAMC!

2. Training Issues Beyond the MD-PhD
a. Finding institutions with short track clinical training programs suitable for MD-PhD graduates; places that are "friendly" of graduates; identification of places with PS programs and programs that lead of PhD during residencies (these places should also be friendly to MD-PhD graduate).
b. Finding out the involvement of programs in writing dean's letters for residencies for MD-PhD grads.

3. Education/Curricular Issues that Impact MD-PhD Programs
a. Finding out impact of curricular changes in medical schools on training of MD-PhD.
b. Are curricular changes pushing away MD's who would otherwise have gone into research in the future?
c. What can/should programs and directors do in this regard? Participation in GREAT is a good start.
d. Role of MD-PhD Programs in training of clinical investigators/translational research. Is there any competition? Are the programs redundant? Are they complementary?

(Good topics for next year's discussion)

4. Information Sharing
a. Stipends: This is something a national group could talk about amongst themselves to avoid starting bidding wars.
b. Issues of multiple accepts by students and how to help them make final decisions so we all can finalize our classes without too much delay/hassle.
c. Ideas to help students focus on a right fit between interests and the offerings of individual programs. If we all knew each other's strengths, we could help students a lot in making decisions.
d. Help each other predict how many offers to make; the AAMC with a check box for MD-PhD applicants will be a great help.

5. Timing of Offers
a. Agreement on a date by which we make initial offers (?April 15).
b. Uniform date for final decisions by applicants (AAMC web site can help here).

6. Sharing Strategies for:
a. Minority recruiting.
b. Recruiting MD students into MD-PhD tracks.

7. AND A FREE TEE SHIRT FOR A MODEST JOINERS FEE PAYABLE TO PAUL INSEL, OUR FEARLESS LEADER!!

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) provides server space for these pages on behalf of the M.D./Ph.D. Directors Association. The AAMC is not responsible for the content of these pages.

07 December 1999