Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: he Association for Patient-Oriented Research (APOR) arose from concerns expressed beginning in the late 1970s about a growing shortage of investigators interested and well trained in conducting research on human subjects.Educational debt, diffi culties in securing grant funding, and greater financial rewards in clinical practice continue to discourage young practitioners from pursuing careers in clinical research.Academic medical centers have seen their margins from clinical earnings decline and have asked potential clinician-investigators to contribute to the bottom line by seeing more patients.Th ere was also an assumption, mostly unspoken, that basic research should be the focus of support and training, and that self-evident clinical and public health applications of basic research fi ndings would be developed without much support from government or academic institutions.But the translation of basic research knowledge to the clinic and community has proven to be challenging and complex, and the rate by which the pharmaceutical industry has been developing signifi cant new drugs is disappointing.An especially endangered species is the clinical investigator who asks questions at the bedside, and may then pursue answers initially in the laboratory and animal models before returning to the patient with a scientifi cally meaningful and ethical research protocol.Th is bidirectional aspect has been recognized as an essential and exciting aspect of patient-oriented research for many years, as exemplifi ed by the comments of John Oates in 1982 (Figure 1).Th e career development of eff ective investigators who are comfortable both at the bedside and in the laboratory requires many years of mentoring and experience as well as stable research funding and institutional support.
Author: Karl E. Anderson
Institution: The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2013810958