The MGH Burns and Trauma Research Training Program provides multidisciplinary research training for individuals at the postdoctoral level. The program enrolls highly qualified individuals with MD degrees or scientists with a PhD in the biological or physical sciences. The training program is expected to last two years or more. Each trainee is expected to participate in one or more of the research opportunities available within the program. The research fellow has no direct patient care responsibilities while enrolled in the research training program. The training program provides high-quality research training to develop or extend the trainee’s research skills and knowledge in preparation for a research career in burns and trauma.

Formal Courses

It is the intent of the training program that all trainees should receive formal course work and ideally that all trainees should seek advanced degrees, especially those who spend more than two years in the training program. Because most of the physician-applicants have already spent four years in medical school, multiple years in postgraduate clinical training (an average of three years), and plan at least three more years of postgraduate clinical training, many physician trainees do not choose to seek advanced degrees. Therefore, each individual training program is tailored to combine high-quality and productive research activities with basic skills in other disciplines including statistics, biochemistry, cellular biology, molecular biology, and the physical sciences. There is a basic requirement for didactic coursework provided for the trainees through the BERE program (described later in this section), including grant writing skills and proper conduct in research.

Program Interactions

The interactions among the faculty members are longstanding and in some instances represent more than 30 years of collaboration. The faculty and research fellows frequently interact at the weekly research seminars and the Clinical Research Coordinating Committee meetings. The Program Director and the Research Training Executive Committee coordinate an individual trainee’s experience. The coordination for application into graduate programs for formal classes at HMS or MIT is an independent process that often can be facilitated by the training faculty – several of whom have either primary or secondary appointments at MIT with teaching and student-supervising roles.

For the training program, the influence of the basic scientists is solid, as demonstrated by the fact that five of the eleven training faculty are full-time scientists or engineers. The degree of the interaction can be easily demonstrated by the high quality of the scientific journals that publish the manuscripts resulting from the fellows' research activities. Assurance that each trainee receives a substantive foundation for a competitive research career is implied in the fact that virtually all fellows completing the program in the past have respectable faculty appointments in the U.S. with substantial research careers.

Basic Science Courses

As previously mentioned, biological, chemical, physical science, immunology, and physiological courses offered at the graduate student level are available from the Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and make up an integral part of each trainees' program extending from selected courses to comprehensive programs leading to a master’s or doctoral degree. If advanced degrees are desired, a master’s degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) requires four advanced courses, a minimum of 66 subject units, and a satisfactory thesis. At Harvard Medical School (HMS), 24 total HMS credits towards a Master of Science degree are required and this option is currently available to the trainees. Additional clinical electives are offered at the MGH as formal courses and as lecture series and clinical conferences.

In addition, the Biomedical Engineering Research and Education (BERE) program offers courses in bioengineering at the postdoctorate level for both MDs and PhDs. It is a two-year program with two major components:

1. a didactic set of biomedical engineering courses designed specifically for physicians
2. a research training activity in biomedical engineering

In addition to the formal coursework, substantial involvement in didactic instruction is available through participation in research seminars, clinical conferences, and working laboratory meetings described below.

Clinical Research Coordinating Committee Meetings The NIH-sponsored burns and trauma research trainees participate in the monthly educational opportunity, which evaluates ongoing research and coordinates the current and future clinical research activities within the MGH Burn Research Center. In this educational session, the trainee clearly sees his/her role in the overall effort of burns and trauma research at the MGH, SHC and MIT. This meeting focuses on the planning and review of clinical research and basic science activities poised to become formal clinical investigations sponsored under the Burn Research Center.

Research Seminars/Clinical Rounds A wide range of research seminars and clinical rounds are offered to provide the trainee with an excellent opportunity to become acquainted with many research problems of burn and trauma care. Three meetings are held weekly for the staff members and trainees to present and discuss their research activities. In addition, weekly seminars by invited speakers are given in the spring and fall semesters.

Weekly Research Meetings Each week, the research trainees and the faculty meet to plan and evaluate research projects, protocols, proposed methodologies and statistical analyses. There are four separate working laboratory sessions weekly: (1) metabolism, (2) tissue engineering, (3) gene therapy and (4) adhesion and inflammation. At these weekly sessions, the trainee presents his or her research plans and reports results. These general working sessions are well attended and recognized to be one of the most important mechanisms in the training program to insure overall planning, to evaluate the trainees, to fill the knowledge deficits in background information, and to assess the skill development of the trainee.

Clinical Conferences In addition to the research seminars, four clinical conferences are held each week (MGH Burn Conference, SHC Burn Conference, MGH Trauma Conference, and MGH Surgical Grand Rounds). The conferences are conducted by the clinical staff and visiting clinicians and scientists and address specific problems related to the clinical care of the injured patient. Research trainees have the opportunity to maintain close contact with the problems of injury treatment through these clinical conferences as well as to pursue clinical research projects involving human subjects as well as to collaborate with other clinical scientists. Trainees who pursue basic laboratory projects can also maintain a close broad contact with clinical problems through attendance at the clinical conferences.

It has been our observation that if non-clinician scientists become acquainted with the important clinical problems of acutely-injured patients through observations and explanation, then their interest and productivity as well as the probability of continuing a career in injury research are markedly increased.

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