7.0 of this article can be downloaded to your hard drive. Clinician scientists face major obstacles Orthopaedic researchers need protected time and financial assistance for overhead Time and money. Given the financial pressures on academic medicine, the decline is probably continuing.
Academic medicine has less money to support research and research is getting squeezed out.
The roots of the problem go even deeper. Stuart Goodman, MD, PhD, Stanford University Medical Center, says most clinicians, upon completing residency, are not prepared to go into research because of the long and focused training process to be a clinician. We are not doing well at reducing the obstacles that are contributing to the progressive decline in our orthopaedic clinician scientists. They will set the standards and raise the bar for the quality of our scientific meetings, courses and publications. This is perceived by many as a reflection of the quality of research that is being done within orthopaedics.