Synopsis

Keywords: Transferable skills: Research coordination, Transferable skills: Project management

I will discuss my experiences on the development of collaborations between PhD scientists and MD clinicians. As a PhD, it is important for me to first determine the type of MD clinicians I am interacting with. The next step is to read the background literature on the specific disease that you are collaborating on. That way you and your collaborative MDs will have some common language. It is also important to develop some "trust" between the PhD and MD collaborators, and this will take some time. It is also important to distribute credits, papers and grants, in a fair fashtion.

In this presentation, I will discuss my experiences on the development of collaborations between a PhD scientist and an MD clinician. In my assessment, it is important to first determine the type of MD clinicians you are interacting with. Some MDs are truly fascinated about research and have original ideas on the etiology and pathophysiology about the disease they are focused on. These MDs can lead the collaboration in terms of both papers and grants. Other MDs are interested in research, but do not have clear ideas or hypotheses to test. These MDs are excellent for patient recruitment, but the PhD scientist will probably need to lead the collaborative project. There are also MDs who are not interested in research. Then it may be a better idea to look for other collaborators. The next important point is that the PhDs need to read sufficiently on the disease that they are trying to apply their technique to, so that there are sufficient common knowledge and language for the PhD and MD to start a discussion. The PhD may need to learn some new biological or medical terms, and understand the current status of the clinical field. It is also important to build some trust between the PhD and MD collaborators. This is not trivial and will take some time. For example, it would be helpful to have some joint papers together, even if it is a small paper. It is of course also important to be fair about the credits each side receives. This includes the authorship and grant PI-ship. These credits and orders should be dependent on the contributions each side made, as well as the clinical or technical foci of the study. It would be ideal to have these aspects specified clearly before the research has progressed substantially. Finally, there is some luck in developing a collaborative relationship between two investigators. Sometimes, for personality or style reasons, two outstanding investigators cannot collaborate successfully. That is fine. One should just move on and look for more matched collaborators.

Acknowledgements

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