Navigating research growth stages

0:00 Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. As clinicians, we spend a decade or more as trainees learning to take care of patients. When we finally start our careers, we want to build research programs, but then we find that our years of clinical training did not adequately prepare us to lead our research program. Through no fault of our own, we struggle to find mentors, and when we can't, we quit. However, clinicians hold the keys to the greatest research breakthroughs.

0:40 For this reason, the Clinician Researcher podcast exists to give academic clinicians the tools to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. Now introducing your host, Toyosi Onwuemene. Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast. I'm your host, Toyosi Onwuemene, and it is an absolute pleasure to be talking with you today. Thank you so much for tuning in. Well, today's episode, I'm going to be talking to you about my stages of growth in research. And actually, to be honest, it's kind of my stages of growth and research, and it's not exactly linear.

1:22 I've really been thinking about it over the past few days as I have thought about my transition over the last few years to lead a research program. And I think it's taken a while to grow into the identity of the leader of a research program, because when I started, I just wanted to do research. Eleven years ago, a new faculty member, I just was like, I just want to do research. And they're like, well, what do you want to do research in? I don't know. I just want to do research. I just want to do research. And then I start to do research and I realized that, oh, all research is not created equal, and I don't want to do all research equally. And so there is a journey that you go through.

2:03 There are phases that you go through in your being drawn to research. And I recognize that because I feel like I've entered into a new phase recently. And I'll tell you that when I first started, sometimes you just start where you are and you're just like, well, this is the project that's in front of me. Let me do it. And it may not even be the project you want to do. And then you start to succeed. And then people are like, well, this is what you do. And you're like, no, that's not really what I wanted to do. I was just trying to get some practice. And here I am. But then you end up with all these projects that are succeeding, but they're not the thing you want to do. And so over time, as I've started to shift toward the thing I really want to do, and to be honest, it took me a long time to figure it out.

2:45 And I finally got to a place where I was like, OK, well, now that I figured out this is what I want to do, how about I put these other projects aside and I go all in on this project? And so I finally feel like I got to a point where I've given everything else away. I've tucked some things in. I've tidied up some stuff. And I'm like, you know what? Now I want to really focus here. This is the thing. This is the thing I really want to contribute to. And so it's a journey to get there. And so I want to talk about stages of growth. And I want to talk about it. And I hope that as I speak that this might resonate with you on your journey. And the reason I think it's important is because sometimes we're going through things and then somebody names them for us and we're like, yes, yes, this is it.

3:31 This is exactly what I'm feeling. And it just is so affirming and it's validating. Or it may be that you're listening, oh, yeah, no, that doesn't resonate with me at all. But it may resonate with someone else that you are critical to. For example, maybe you're mentoring people and they're going through these phases and it's important for you to help them grow and develop. And so this may be relevant. And again, the reason I want to share it is because I'm a clinician who said I want to lead research. And I was at a point in my career where people felt like, well, you haven't really done much in terms of research. So I don't think you really want to do this. We're not really sure we can support you to do this. And I think many clinicians find themselves in that space.

4:13 So I want to just share some language for you to think about and whether it applies to you or whether it may apply to somebody that you mentor. OK? All right. So the first thing I want to talk about is the call. The call. But I do think it's important to talk about the call, like hearing the call to lead research. Now being a scholar is part of academic medicine. You as a scholar in academic medicine, you think about it critically, you read the articles, you quote the articles maybe, you teach. Scholarship is just part of what we do.

4:53 But when you say, I don't just want to be someone who's studying or who's understanding an area of scholarship. I want to be someone who's leading an area of scholarship. That's different. It's like, OK, you want to lead. What do you mean? Well, I want to lead a research program. And say, OK. That's a call because everybody's contributing to scholarship. Everyone's part of the scholarship environment. But few people are leading an area of scholarship. When you say, I want to lead, I want to be the person who asks questions. And then I want to be the person who develops the experiments to answer those questions. And then I want to be the person to decide what the next set of questions that need answering.

5:35 I want to lead this program of scholarship. That is different. That is different. Especially when we think about the fact that if we have a clinical background, we were trained to take care of patients. That's what clinicians are trained to do, take care of patients. Yes, study the literature, know what's the best evidence based strategy to take care of your patient. But our goal is to synthesize what's already there. When we say, well, I want to be the person leading the data that's being or the data generation that others are needing to synthesize to care for patients. That's a different space. And it requires a different set of skills. And it requires something different.

6:16 And so to some extent, it is a call because it's different from what everybody else around you is doing. And it may mean that you have to put in more beyond where you are to succeed in that way. And so it is a call. And the first thing is, are you called to do it? And I think it's important because it's especially because we're in environments of scholarship and depending on the academic medical center you are in, people expect different things. Like maybe there's an expectation that everybody should be publishing, everybody should be writing grants and all of that. And so sometimes there's the whole idea that everybody should do it, especially in the more intensive research institutions. But everybody does not want to.

6:58 I mean, people will play the game. It's like, oh, is this what's required to make an A? Sure, I can do this. We're good at doing that. We're clinicians. We did the whole thing for med school, residency, fellowship. But is it what you want to do? Is it what you want to do? And so everybody is not necessarily feeling the pull to do it, but some people are. And so it's like, do you have the call? And if you don't have the call, it's okay. If you don't feel like this is what you want to do, it's okay. Contribute to scholarship. There's always going to be room for contribution. But when you want to lead, not just contribute, but to lead an area, that's something that I think people are called to do. And that's something that I think is important to recognize that there is a call.

7:40 And sometimes if you're having a conversation with a young person whose early career is to find out what is driving their need. Some people just want a publication and that's okay. Find them a way to get published. Find them a way to be a co-author on a publication. But when people say, I want to lead research, that's different from just having your name on an authorship byline. That's different. But everybody doesn't feel called to do that. People might say they feel called to do that just so they can get into the program, but everybody doesn't feel the call. And I think the important thing is number one, do you feel like this is what you're supposed to be doing or you want to do? Okay. So clarifying the call.

8:21 Number two is answering the call. I think this is really important because just because you want to do something doesn't mean you end up doing it for different reasons. Life. Life comes at you and you're like, oh, you know, I always thought I wanted to lead a research program, but you know what? Right now I just need to pay off student loan debt. Bye. And it's okay. Not everybody answers the call. And I think that in thinking about whether you answer the call or not, you do have to sit down and count the cost because like anything else in life, there's a price to be paid for the end goal. And the question is, are you ready to pay the price? Are you willing to pay the price? Because if you're a clinician, you've invested your life, your 20s in medical school and residency and maybe even in fellowship and you studied so hard and you've just, you've done a lot of investment and then you do all of that, you're a faculty member and then there's like, oh, here's the other set of investments that you need to make if you're going to lead a research program.

9:20 Some people may say, no, thank you. How about I just quit all of this and go make a lot of money elsewhere doing something different? And some people make that choice and it's not good. It's not bad. It's just you. We don't all answer the call, but if we're going to, we should ask ourselves, well, what does it cost? Like, what is this thing about? And then ask whether we want to pay the price. And sometimes we don't even really know what it costs, right? For those of you who got into medical school, you remember life before medicine, you had no idea what you were really getting into. And then life post-medicine or at least in the middle of medicine, you're like, oh, if only I had known that this is exactly how what it costs.

10:01 I don't know if I would have made the same decisions. Sometimes it's like that in research. But again, there are some things that you can tell upfront and you decide whether you want to be the person who's writing grants all the time or publishing all the time or, you know, you decide. And some people answer that call and some people don't. But number two is answering the call. Number three is finding the right environment. Now this is the space where people talk about mentoring and the importance of a primary mentor and how, oh my gosh, you've got to find the right mentor. And as much as I am an evangelist for having mentoring teams rather than just the one person, I do think that when you're starting out, you really need an environment of support.

10:44 I think that's what's most important, not so much the right mentor, because the thing about the mentor that people don't talk about is that the mentor comes with resources, not just money in their research program, but people who surround their research program, who are also part of your environment of training or also part of the culture of learning. Now do you have an environment that supports you to succeed? When you're a clinician and you're like, well, instead of seeing patients eight days or eight hour, eight sessions a week, and, you know, just driving clinical care, I want to be the person leading a program of study. Well that means you have to do things a little bit differently to be able to carve out the time to succeed as a researcher.

11:24 And that means maybe you're not going to be as immersed in the clinical space, not in the same way that other people who are primarily clinicians are going to be. And it's hard because you're going against the grain of the people who surround you. You need support. Otherwise you're going to not succeed in answering this call. And so finding the right environment that acknowledges your deficits, I mean, I don't want to say deficits because it's like, oh, something wrong with you. It's just that you don't have the skill set built up yet. So you are not yet skilled in this research pathway. Do you have the right environment that supports you to build the skills? And to be honest, every environment is not the right environment.

12:05 There are environments where they're like, oh yeah, you can go in research after you finish your eight hours of clinic daily for five days a week. Oh, you can do your research. That's not going to be an environment in which you're going to be able to grow skills. It's not likely, right? The environment you want to find is an environment that says, oh, building research skills takes time and energy and effort and you need time and space to do it. How can we support you to find the time and space to do it? That's the kind of environment you want to be in. And the other environment is also the environment of like, okay, well, let's take the time to help you grow in the skills. Let's not berate you, call you names, tell you you're not worthy, make you feel bad for skills that you don't have yet.

12:46 It's like yelling at a kid who can't walk or it's like, well, I'm just a year and a half. I don't know how to walk yet. Do you have the right environment that supports you, encourages you, and nurtures you to succeed? That is finding the right environment. And the benefit for many of us who have great mentors or great mentoring is that it's not just the primary mentor. It's that they come with a whole cadre of individuals. There's the senior postdoc. There's the earlier career postdoc. There's the graduate student, the senior graduate student. There's the med student in the lab. Different people at different career stages speaking the same language, being immersed in the same culture of investigation and inquiry and hypothesis generating and hypothesis testing.

13:31 It's a beautiful experience in the right environment. And there's the environment that's toxic. And people yell at each other and steal each other's data and make each other look bad and do some things that are questionable ethically. And there are different kinds of environments. If you're going to succeed, if you're going to thrive as a leader of a research program that you're proud of, you're going to want to find the environment that nurtures you and supports you. And if you can't find the environment, you're going to think about how do I create for myself an environment that nurtures and supports my growth as a researcher. So number three is finding the right environment. Number four, it's a theoretical knowledge. Now this is where it does matter that you take coursework.

14:15 And I'm not talking about coursework so you can get a grade. And it's helpful to have a degree, but not always necessary. But there is a foundational theoretical knowledge that helps you be refined in the work you do. You can get a lot of practical knowledge, but the theoretical knowledge is helpful too because what it does is it helps you put your practical knowledge into context. And for many of us, it is relevant. It is important. So maybe we don't get a PhD, maybe we get the master's in clinical investigation. That's my master's in clinical investigation. But those foundational body of knowledge that helps you grow as a researcher, that's so critical, that's so important. Now this knowledge doesn't have to come out of a classroom where you sit in a lecture hall for hours and hours on end.

14:58 It can come from the practical environment of your research environment. That's where you are attending lab and people are giving presentations on their project and there are updates in their project like, okay, this is where we are, this is what we're doing. These are my updates, those are my updates. And then you're like, oh, okay, this is how you did this project. And people ask questions. And there's a whole culture of learning that comes with that. That's actually theoretical knowledge because you're not working on their project, but as they're presenting the challenges of their projects, you're learning and you're growing in that way. And so it's how can you immerse yourself in an environment where you're growing in theoretical knowledge as well as you are in practical knowledge as well. Okay, so gaining theoretical knowledge is the fourth stage.

15:42 The fifth stage is gaining general skills. Now when you first start and you're like, well, I just want to do research. That's where I was when I started 11 years ago. I was like, I just want to do research. And I had areas of interest, but I was like, I just, the area of interest in me is not as important as the fact that I just want to do research. And I think that's so important because many of us don't know. It's like asking a five-year-old, what do you want to be when you grow up? It's like, well, I don't know yet. And that's a fair answer. Though when we are early career and we're saying, I don't know yet, it doesn't look good, but it's true. It's like, well, I haven't even really been exposed to different analytical methods or to different ways of testing hypotheses or to different disciplines. I'm not sure yet what program of study I want to lead.

16:23 I have a general idea, but what matters early on is gaining the general skills. It's not so important what the project is. And so many times people are like, oh, I want to find the right project, but it's not so much the right project as much as it's the right environment. The right project in the wrong environment is the wrong project. The wrong project in the right environment will always help you grow. And so it's not so much the right project as much as are you gaining the general skills. It's not so much what grant am I applying for, but are you applying for grants and applying and gaining the skills in grant writing? It's not so much, oh, what manuscript or what journals are you submitting to? It's as much as are you going through the process of submitting high quality work that can be accepted or at least favorably reviewed by high quality journals.

17:13 It's the skills that you're growing in that matter really early on. And that's why at the beginning, the project is not as important as the fact that you are just working and moving things forward. It's helpful if you already have an area of expertise or an area that you're interested in. But oftentimes for us as clinicians, we kind of do need to be expedient and say, okay, well, what am I really good at? What do I really enjoy clinically and how can I layer my research interests on top of my clinical interests? So it's helpful to move that forward. But early on, don't focus as much on the project as much as you're focused on what you're growing in, what skills you're building and making sure that you are growing in the skills.

17:56 And so this is where it's important to have a peer network too. They're saying, well, what skills are important? Or having mentorship models where people can say these are the skills that you need to grow in to succeed in this way and then making sure that you are gaining those skills. And so that the specific, oh, this is what I'm contributing to, may not be as important as learning the skills and growing in your research skills. Okay. So that's number five is gaining general skills. Number six is discovering a passion. I think that's so important, but it's not where I started. I believe in passion. I think it's so important to do the things that really speak to your heart, the things that really motivate you because life is lived differently in the space where you actually feel like you're contributing significantly.

18:42 Like you just show up differently in that way. But more important than discovering the passion is getting on the journey that takes you to discover a passion. It's one thing, for example, going back to when you're five years old and people ask you, what do you want to be when you grow up? Well, if you've never left your house, your home, where maybe mom and dad are farmers, you don't know that there's anything else you like besides maybe milking cows. You don't know yet because you haven't really been exposed to that. But as you leave the house and you go around and you fly planes and you are in different environments, you're like, I could be interested in that. And so passion is born out of exposure. You don't always know what you're passionate about until you've been exposed to enough things that generate your interest.

19:26 And so that's why discovering a passion is not actually the number one. It's not the most important because it takes a while to grow passion. It takes a while to grow skill. And sometimes you like an area, but you don't have skill yet. And the fact that you lack skill in the struggles you have with building the skills may make the area not feel so attractive. But the moment you acquire the skills that you need, and sometimes there's a sense of, okay, well, now I have the skills, I can focus on what I like. And so discovering a passion takes time. And for some of us, we find the passion early on, we're like, oh, no, no, no, no, I came from the very beginning to do research in X, Y, Z. I'm very clear that this is what I want to contribute to. And that's great. But many people don't have that.

20:08 Many people take time to discover, grow, and nurture their passion. And I want to say that discovering a passion or working in the area of your passion may not be as important as first of all, just growing in general skills. And then using those skills, applying those skills to an area of passion. And that's why sometimes where you start is not as important as the fact that you do start. Where or who you work with may not be as important as the fact that you have someone to work with. And so gain the skills and the passion will find you or you will find it as you have exposure to different environments. Okay. Finally, number seven is leading the program.

20:49 And so it's like, okay, you have acquired theoretical knowledge. You've acquired practical knowledge. You've grown in skills. You know how to write grants. You know how to publish manuscripts. Take them all the way through the publication process. You know how to work the publication pipeline. You know how to write consistently. Do all the things that are habits of a successful researcher. And I'm going to reference a prior episode where I talk about habits, seven habits of a successful researcher. You've leveraged all those things and now you're leading. Now you're the one saying, this is what we're going to study. These are the questions that we're going to answer. This is how we're going to answer those questions. You get to choose that. And it's a really beautiful thing, but it takes time.

21:30 It takes time. And sometimes you're leading and you don't even feel like you should be the leader. And sometimes people tell you, you should be leading. You're like, no, no, I just want to, I just want to stay here in this one space. No, don't make me the leader. But the reality is you came to contribute. You didn't just come to contribute to other people's work. You came to contribute as the leader of a body of work. That's an important and powerful thing. And it takes time to get there. And it's important to recognize that it's not easy to make that journey. And maybe you're kind of way, way already on the way to that journey. Maybe you're leading already. It's like thinking about the people around you. What do they need as you're mentoring, as you're bringing people up?

22:12 What stage are they in? Are they in the stage where they're just gathering general skills? Are they in the place where they're discovering their passion and what they really want to lead? And so it's important to think about what stage are the people you support in or what stage are you in? I'd love to hear about it. Please send me a direct message. I am usually a LinkedIn. And I would love to hear about your process as you kind of come through in your research career, especially for those of you who are clinicians working to lead a research program. All right. It's been a pleasure talking with you today. Again, I'll summarize that we talked about, first of all, hearing the call, verifying the call, number two, answering the call, number three, finding the right environment, number four, gaining theoretical knowledge, number five, gaining general skills, number six, discovering a passion, and number seven, actually doing the leadership.

23:03 And so I would love to hear about your process or I'd love to hear about how this podcast has been helpful to you. And I look forward to talking with you again next time on the Clinician Researcher Podcast. Thank you for listening. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Clinician Researcher Podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. If you found the information in this episode to be helpful, don't keep it all to yourself.

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