(24) TARRANT COUNTY PHYSICIAN
March/April 2021
SCHOLARLY PURSUIT
ave you ever been
curious about an
unknown in your
practice? Do you
ever find yourself
thinking “what if…”?
Have you always been curious about
doing a little research, but not sure where
to start? If so, you may be interested in
participating in a research project with
a medical school student from the TCU
and UNTHSC School of Medicine.
The program is called the Scholarly
Pursuit and Thesis (SPT) course and it
is a four-year research project that all
students at the school undertake as part
of their education. It was designed for
students to explore medical research,
practice critical inquiry, and use medical
information literacy to become patientcentric
physicians with life-long curiosity
and learning skills. The course begins
with students reinvigorating their curiosity
and questioning skills. This is followed by
some basic research training, including
Medical Education Today
and THESIS
literature searching and appraisal skills,
research question development, and
human subjects training through the
Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative
program. Program faculty will help
develop these skills and assist students
throughout their research projects.
Many students have prior experience
with research from their undergraduate
or post-college education. During the first
year, students work with their mentor to
produce a prospectus that is similar to a
small research grant application, detailing
project parameters. During the next two
years students work on projects with
their mentors, and in the fourth year they
produce a thesis as well as a poster for a
public presentation.
Some common questions from
potential research mentors include:
What is the role of the mentor? The
mentor acts as a guide to the student in
the research project. He or she will assist
the student in designing the research
project and often help with providing
data or access to data for research. The
mentor will work with the student as they
monitor data collection and interpretation,
will be available for questions, and will
assist the student with the final thesis
conclusions.
What areas and topics are appropriate
for student research projects? Mentors
and projects can come from any field (see
Table). The only requirements are that the
project is researched effectively, includes
some sort of intervention or examination
(experiment, chart review, product
design, data collection, etc.), has a good
plan for analysis of results, and includes
a discussion of the results with potential
application and questions for the future.
How does a student decide what
research project to do? Generally,
there are four ways to develop the
projects. Firstly, the mentor may already
have some ongoing research that the
H
by Michael Bernas
Scholarly Pursuit and Thesis Program Director