Re: Mentoring for the Diverse Range of Family Physicians’ Engagement in Research

Dear Editor,

We read with interest the article by Muramoto et al. recommending interdisciplinary research support to provide clinically focused faculty with mentorship by seasoned research health scientists to increase clinical research engagement and productivity.¹ The research mentoring program described by Muramoto et al. would afford family physicians the opportunity to engage in clinical research catered toward their level of engagement.¹ However, the expansion of research mentorship to complement the level of engagement by family medicine physicians implies a hierarchical structure where the pursuit of independent funding in clinical research awarded by the National Institute of Health and other institutions is often viewed as the standard.² The emphasis on obtaining independent-funding often leads to the exclusion of other styles of research. Depicting research in family medicine across different styles of engagement instead of levels of engagement introduces clinically focused faculty to various entry points in research participation.

A centralized research support team alongside mentorship can serve as a catalyst for different styles of research production, introducing faculty to various roles within research from recruiting patients to leading a project as a principal investigator. This is especially pertinent in the family medicine setting where there are ample opportunities to participate in different aspects of community-engaged, health equity, and other forms of clinical research.¹ The combined effect of mentorship alongside logistic support in clinically focused faculty has been modeled in pediatrics at our institution. At a rural-serving academic medical center, the integration of a centralized research team in the department of pediatrics increased the number of publications of clinical-track faculty by 30% over a 3-year period from 2017 to 2020.³ Similarly, the implementation of a program providing combined mentorship and research support to faculty in the department of internal medicine at an academic health center increased the scholarly production where 90% of faculty had reported scholarly output across a 4-year study period.⁴

Shifting the paradigm of research in family medicine away from a hierarchy of goals will introduce family physicians to a diverse range of opportunities with the same inherent value of providing evidence for clinical practice. While research mentorship is an essential component in promoting research engagement in family physicians,¹ logistic support can serve as a multiplier introducing faculty to different styles of research which may not be accrued from mentorship alone.