Seizing opportunities in grant writing

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. For those of you who are watching me by video, I'll tell you that I probably look tired, and that's because it's been one of those late nights trying to get a grant in on deadline. So I started last week without knowledge of this particular grant that I submitted this morning, but I had an encounter on Sunday with a friend who said, hey, I have a grant I'm submitting.

1:31 Can you give me some advice? And I thought, of course, I'd be happy to give you some advice. And what is this grant? And so I look at this grant opportunity. It's an AI opportunity through Google, and I thought, oh, this sounds interesting. I should look and see if I can apply. So when I did my weekly planning meeting late Sunday slash early Monday, I had listed Tuesday, start writing the grant application, Wednesday, submit the grant application. It was due on Thursday morning. And when I had the conversation with a colleague on Monday night, it turns out that he wasn't able to submit without a collaborator who was based at an academic medical center, AKA me.

2:16 So then it turned out that we were going to collaborate and submit the grant, which was fine because I had already decided late Sunday that I was going to submit this grant. And I thought, oh, it's three pages. I can do this. It'll be straightforward. How hard can it be? Famous last words of anybody who's ever written a grant. It took me a long time, let's just say a lot longer than I wanted. So I had blocked out a couple of hours of writing time. So no, I didn't get to it on Tuesday. I said, you know what, I'm going to block a couple of hours on Wednesday morning and then I'll be done by the end of the day, Wednesday. Well, my couple of hours on Wednesday morning is about 90 minutes, actually 180 minutes worth of writing.

3:00 So it's that three hours. And I thought, well, within three hours, I should be able to put together three pages. I will tell you at the end of the three hour period, I had put together one page and there were two pages to go. And most of what was left was really talking about the details of the proposal, the methods. And so it was an interesting realization to say, wow, three hours is not enough time to really put together three pages. Anyway, long story short, let's say it was a late night last night and an early morning this morning and the proposal is now submitted. Was it a perfect proposal? Definitely not. I have to tell you that I've been writing a lot of grants, not nearly as many as others around me have written, but it still takes a long time to submit a good grant proposal.

3:48 And a day or two spent writing three pages is not nearly enough because grant writing is an iterative process, right? And it takes time to really create something that's strong and solid, something you can stand behind. And so it was not a perfect grant and yet we submitted. And I just want to talk to you today about how to be ready to take advantage of an award opportunity. Because as of this time last week, I had no idea I was submitting, had no idea of the grant and that by this morning we're submitted, right? So I want to talk about that. And this is not, I just submitted, right? I don't hear about the funding until three months from now. And for all I know, I may or may not be funded.

4:28 But the issue is not whether I'm funded or not. The issue is that we showed up and submitted on time. So I will say that one of the things that helped me recognize that this was an opportunity that I was going to take advantage of, even though I was at the last minute, was being very clear about the goals of my research program. So I am a hematologist focused in rare blood disorders and I have a particular rare blood disorder on my mind, it's TTP. And I really want to improve outcomes in patients with TTP. Now when this opportunity came up, it was an AI opportunity and my colleague is creating chat bots for self-education.

5:12 And I thought, well, one of the things that has come up in some of my work is that my patients say, we wish more people knew about TTP. We wish there was a place that we could go to and get information that was clear headed and level headed that didn't make us afraid or think we were about to die, right? And so there's been an expression of need for quality educational content. And in one of our qualitative interviews recently, that was a theme that kept coming up from patients. So I understood that it was an issue that was important to my patient population. Here comes this opportunity where someone is creating educational content in other spaces and I see an opportunity to create educational content in my field and marrying it with their AI capabilities.

5:59 Absolutely awesome opportunity. Well, because it fit within the overarching goal of my research program, I was able to take advantage of the opportunity or at least recognize it as an opportunity that was worth sacrificing time and energy to complete. But the only way I was able to recognize it as an opportunity is because I'm clear about how I want to contribute to my patient population and I'm in tune with my population as to what their needs are and how my research program may be able to meet those needs. And so my overarching big, big, hairy, audacious goal is to bring patients with TTP to early diagnosis. That's the big thing.

6:40 And I recognize that I don't just want to bring patients with TTP to early diagnosis. I actually really want to improve their outcomes. And so if education helps them advocate strongly for themselves and improve their health outcomes, I'm all for that. It fits. And so being very clear about the overarching goals of your program and the impact that you want to make allows you to see and take advantage of opportunities as they arise. So that's number one. Be very clear about the overarching goals of your research program. Number two is to create space for reflection. So I know the overarching goal of my research program and I understood in the moment how this opportunity fit.

7:27 But I was only able to do that because I've had time to think about it. I've had time to say, hmm, how do I want to move forward? What are my patients thinking? What are their concerns? And for that reason, I was able to recognize the opportunity when it came. Now in a past life when I was so busy, I couldn't see my brain. When I didn't create space to have a weekly planning meeting, when I didn't create space for reflection, I couldn't have recognized the opportunity if it hit me with a big stick. And that's the being prepared for when opportunity comes. But you can only be prepared if you're paying attention. You can only be paying attention if you have time for rest and reflection.

8:09 Now I will say that I feel like I'm pretty busy. I suspect that you are too. But one thing I am not is crazy busy to the point where I don't have time to think. I have the opportunity to take walks in the morning, which I do most mornings. I didn't do that this morning because I was trying to get the grant submitted. But I will after I share this particular episode with you. But those spaces happening regularly allow me to really think about how do I want to contribute? How do we move the research project forward? Another opportunity that came out of this was that I have a potential new collaborator and we could think about how to move this work forward, not just for this grant opportunity, but just in general.

8:53 Now, the moment we are all invested in submitting this one grant, and all of a sudden the probability of increasing opportunities for collaboration happens, right? We may not be funded on this opportunity. However, we've established a relationship, right? This intense 24 hour, let's get this done. Holy cow, are you still awake? Can you give me what I need relationship to submit the grant already creates a kind of connection that allows us to move forward. So by creating space for reflection, I'm able to take advantage of that opportunity. Okay. Number three is that when an impossible situation arises, ask how.

9:33 I will tell you that when my colleague brought this opportunity before me and then let me know that, oh, it was only going to be possible if I contributed, I remember the whole time I kept thinking, okay, I actually was, I was judgmental in my mind because I was like, okay, and you're going to make this work. How are you going to write a grant in two days? How? Because you know what? It doesn't happen. Well, I know it doesn't happen. Well, I know it's not impossible. If you're going to write a good grant, it really does take more than two days. Absolutely. It takes more than two days. Now, you could argue that if you've been writing grants serially for years and years and years, you could put a grant together in two days in a way that you were not able to put a grant together in 10 weeks in the past because it's not really that moment in which you're pulling all the information.

10:27 You're really pulling information from cumulative hours, hours and hours of gathering that data. So what would have taken you a long time to look up and pull together takes you much shorter. So I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's just not the kind of thing I would opt to do. But I recognize the opportunity. I recognize the possibility for collaboration. It did seem like I wasn't going to be able to make it, but I thought, how can we make this happen? And so one of the things that ended up happening is that with my colleague, we said, well, here's the other person that is in this group that may make the most sense to be a co-PI. If we bring in this person, then we might be able to have a coherent application that stands a chance potentially of being funded.

11:15 Now again, it felt like it was impossible, but I was trying very hard to switch out of judgment motive. I can't believe you're telling me this at the last minute to how can we make this possible? How can we make this possible? And the more how questions I was asking myself, the more possibilities came. And so honestly, if you'd asked me on Sunday whether I thought that a grant submission by Thursday morning was possible, I would say no, of course not. No, it doesn't happen like that. But we were able to get it done. And that's because we didn't challenge or allow our judgment to drive the situation. We said, well, how can we make this possible?

11:58 First of all, is to recognize that unusual collaborations create synergy. I'm a clinician. I've known clinicians all my life. I love clinicians. I understand them. They're my people. They speak my language. And it's a different kind of synergy that's created by someone who doesn't speak my language, doesn't know what I do, but has tools that could come together with the resources I have to make something amazing. And so when I was connected to a computational biologist who's also a data scientist and has created AI self-learning tools, I could see the possibilities in a way that none of my clinician friends are going to be able to connect with me to create resources.

12:42 Now can clinicians come together to create educational resources? Yes, we've been doing that for years. We know how to do that. But it's a different kind of synergy that comes from someone with deep expertise elsewhere coming together with my deep expertise. Both of us are educators to be able to create a product that actually can really benefit patients in a huge way. It's an unusual collaboration. This person exists outside of my sphere, but it's a big deal because it's creating a powerful synergy. So recognize the potential for unusual collaborations to create synergy.

13:23 Maybe if this was a clinical colleague saying, hey, let's do this grant, I would say, eh, it's too late. It'll take too much time. But recognizing that this person has the potential to actually execute on what would become an amazing product, then I recognize that that's actually something that I should pay attention to and I should go out of my way to try to make happen if possible. Number five is to push for the impossible. Okay, I didn't think this could happen, but I kept asking how. And even as of last night, when I was looking at my final, I finally finished page two and I was like, great, it's due at 9 a.m. I'm exhausted.

14:04 It's 11 p.m. How am I going to get page three written? It really did feel impossible. I don't pull, I try not to pull all nighters anymore. It's a thing of the past for me. I don't do that consistently. Honestly, as I'm getting more seasoned in age, it's something that becomes harder and harder for me to do. So I didn't pull the all nighter. I went to sleep. But then I woke up early this morning and of course it's on my mind and I was able to finish page three in a way that felt good to me. So at the end of the day, I was able to submit the application on time. I didn't feel like that was such an amazing grant. I've had those experiences in my life where we've pulled together a grant and I'm like, this was really good.

14:46 I don't feel that way about this grant, but I don't have to. What was important was to push to submission. Now number six is to recognize that the win is in the submission. So I'm telling you that I'm celebrating right this moment and celebrating today. I don't hear about the grant, but the grant awards until October and it may or may not be funded, but the goal is not funding, not all the time. You would say that, wait a minute, if the goal is not money at the end of the rainbow, like what are you doing? But I will tell you that every time you submit a grant, every time you finish, you announce to yourself into the universe and to whoever else is paying attention that you are somebody who can start and finish a project that actually felt impossible to finish at the beginning.

15:38 It reinforces your self image as somebody who can see opportunity, take advantage of opportunity and take it to the finish line. It reinforces your identity as someone who doesn't let impossible situations stop them. Being able to take a grant to the finish line feels like an impossible scenario because there are points in which you're like, okay, this was a bad idea. Oh no, this is never going to work. But when you are able to get it to the finish line, you tell yourself that you can push past obstacles, you can crush them on the way to the end. And so submitting a grant is a reward.

16:19 And does this apply to only grant submissions? Of course not. It's anything in life where you're able to say at the end, you push through challenges to get to the end. And so what you're doing when you submit, every time you submit, especially a grant, you're creating an identity of somebody who finishes even when things are challenging. You're creating an identity of someone who's creative to be able to bring solutions where it seems like there is no solution. So the win is in the submission. I'm bringing this episode to you because it's fresh on my mind. And then I'm going to go away and I'm going to celebrate the submission. I'm going to do that with going for a walk and reflecting and all of that, which is a celebration, but I'm celebrating the submission.

17:03 The seventh thing I want to tell you is that all grant application submissions help you win. There is a win in every package of a grant submission. I will tell you that there were times during my writing where I thought, what was this person thinking, telling me about this at the last minute? I had some choice thoughts, but I also thought I was like, no, this is an opportunity. This is not that, it's okay. This is an opportunity. I mean, they didn't tell me about it on the day it was due. They told me about it at least three days before. So I can't say I didn't have enough notice. I mean, I didn't, but I could have not had the opportunity period, right? But I had enough of a window it was possible.

17:45 And so the win is in all the things I mentioned, including all of a sudden acquiring a new collaborator who has now put an energy to say, hey, can we see where else we can take this? The win is also in the fact that we now have a finished product, all bit imperfect, that we can now take and actually make into a really good product. So the next time we go to submit something similar, we already have the building blocks and the foundation. I have everybody's bio sketches, right? We have our budget. We have the things that we need. We've talked through these issues for the first grant, which may or may not be funded. Now we have something that we can take, make better for the next grant with an increased likelihood of funding.

18:31 Now that's why grant writing is iterative. You're never perfect. The goal is not perfection. The goal is progress, which improves things. And over time, you actually do get close to a perfect grant. If you've ever been on study section and read some of those grants or you're like, holy cow, this is near perfect, it's near perfect because it's been through many iterations. And some of those iterations include having gone through a review and not being funded. And so honestly, the win is in the grant package because of who it allows you to be, how you are able to change your identity in the process of writing it, and also the benefit that now you have something that you can take and submit elsewhere.

19:13 Now you have a building block that you can take and share with others. Now you have a building block that helps you create synergy and collaborations. The grant is the win. Not the money at the end of the rainbow. That's just a bonus. The grant is the win. All right. So I told you seven things. Number one, be clear about the overarching goal of your research program. Number two, create space for reflection. Number three, when an impossible situation arises, ask yourself how. Number four, recognize that unusual collaborations create synergy. Number five, push for the impossible.

19:53 Number six, recognize that the win is in the submission. And number seven, recognize that all grant applications help you win. All right. I want to thank you so much for listening. I look forward to talking with you again next time on the next episode of the Clinician Researcher Podcast. Have a great day. 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.

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