“ This partnership with the Office of Research, coupled with the vision and resources of FSU Health, is truly a win-win for our students and clerkship faculty,” said Alma Littles, M. D., dean of the College of Medicine.“ It is incumbent upon us to provide the best education possible for our students so that they can become outstanding health care professionals, providing care for the people of Florida and beyond. Working with practicing physicians— in real-world settings— will have a significant and positive impact on patient care and outcomes.”
Resources run the gamut from proposal development, grants and contracts, biostatistics and informatics, to compliance and Institutional Review Board requirements, and everything in between.
“ One of the key aspects to being a great clinical provider and physician is to be able to take basic science and information, which includes research, understand how to read the research, and translate it to patient care, because ultimately we ' re all patient educators,” said Matthew Lee( M. D.,’ 06), an early adopter of student research and a surgery clerkship faculty member through the Tallahassee Regional Campus.“ A physician is a patient educator, and if we can take the information from research and be able to relate it directly to patient care, that really helps the students ' medical education.”
Lee is fortunate. Tallahassee Orthopedic Clinic, where he practices, has a close relationship with FSU and actively supports student research through its TOC Foundation. TOC physicians are currently mentoring 10 students on 12 projects. Further cementing the partnership, TOC has hired Emilie Miley, Ph. D., as its director of research. She also holds a research faculty position in the Anne Spencer Daves College of Education, Health and Human Sciences, where she also serves as the assistant director of Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Research in the college’ s Institute of Sports Sciences and Medicine.
“ The TOC partnership with FSU is instrumental,” Miley said.“ There are so many things that a researcher needs access to. You need access to articles, because not everything is open-source text. Having the connection to the academic institution really helps with that and it helps with things like RED-
Matthew Lee, M. D., and Emilie Miley, P. h. D., TOC’ s director of research, review data compiled by one of their student researchers.
Cap,” which is short for Research Electronic Data Capture, a secure web-based application used to build and manage online surveys and databases for research studies.
“ As practicing physicians, we have the clinical data. We have the patient databases, but we don’ t have the time. We have ideas,” Lee said, adding that TOC has, on average, more than 280,000 office visits each year.“ It really comes down to finances, time and resources as to why private-practice physicians cannot produce research at the level that’ s required today without assistance. The patient ultimately benefits, as well as the students, if there is collaboration.”
Lee added that the“ link between the private practice and academic institution is something I think needs to be created or replicated in a greater fashion.”
Working behind the scenes to help strengthen those partnerships and infrastructure is a core group of researchers, faculty and administrators, including Xian Jin Xie, Ph. D., the College of Medicine’ s senior associate dean for Research and Graduate Programs. He and
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