Outcomes of a mentored research competition for authoring pediatric case reports in chiropractic

Abstract

Objective: A chiropractic pediatric specialist often encounters novel clinical findings not reported currently in the literature. This project matched board certified chiropractic pediatric specialists with a mentor experienced in scientific writing to co-author a research paper to add to the literature base available on chiropractic pediatric practice. Methods: Clinicians who had received their Diplomate in Clinical Chiropractic Pediatrics and mentors in scientific writing were teamed up. Two surveys were conducted to collect quantitative data, and focus groups were held to gather qualitative data about the overall experience of the mentor and mentee (clinicians) participating in the study. The first survey was sent to the clinicians to gather information about their research idea and their experience in research. The second survey was conducted upon project completion by clinicians and mentors. A project wiki was used as a communication strategy. Results: Ten reports were submitted by authorship teams. Time spent on this project was an average of 58 hours by clinicians and 36 hours by the mentors. Mentors aided by adding content material, editing manuscripts, and educating the clinicians in the art of writing a paper. Improvements for this project included clearer mentoring guidelines and not using the wiki as a communication venue. Conclusion: The project ultimately fulfilled the goal of using a mentorship model to facilitate scientific writing education and ease the anxiety of authoring a first publication. The overall experience was ''good''; however, there are opportunities for improvement. INTRODUCTIONCase reports have two common characteristics: they describe the events of an interesting healthcare case and they provide new information for clinicians.1 Case reports reside lower on the evidence hierarchy due to their inherent inability to be generalized to larger populations.2 However, for some research topics, case reports can add value, especially for generating hypotheses and safety data.Interest in advanced education in the field of pediatrics has increased over the past two decades within the chiropractic profession.3 Currently, two postgraduate clinical pediatric diplomate programs aim to enhance clinical knowledge for doctors of chiropractic who seek to treat children.4,5 A chiropractic pediatric specialist often describes encounters with novel clinical findings not found currently in the literature. Additionally, the process of writing about the novel clinical findings in a case report is a hands-on educational experience in scholarly writing and critical evaluation of the literature.The challenge of authoring a paper, even to an experienced clinician, can be intimidating. Therefore, this project was designed to ease the anxiety of developing and writing a case report for practicing clinicians who were inexperienced authors. For this, we invited experienced chiropractors, board certified in pediatrics (Diplomates in Clinical Chiropractic Pediatrics, or DICCPs) to take part in a pediatric research...

Researcher and Author Impact Metrics: Variety, Value, and Context

“…Evidence suggests that elementary mentorship and writing support by peers and professional writers, which is aimed at adhering to available standards and citing reliable sources, effectively and ethically increases publication activity. 63 64 65 …”