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9005 Background: Clinical investigator training (CIT) is commonly performed in an apprenticeship manner rather than following a prospective education model. This may lead to disparities in educational prospects. There is greater accesiblity for training opportunites prevailing in larger academic institutions – an advantage not always within reach for majority of oncology patients and professionals. Lack of predefined standard competencies during fellowship training may lead to significant heterogeneity, weaken the current pipeline, and decrease the number of principal investigators (PIs) for clinical trials. We performed a national needs assessment to understand oncology trainee and faculty perceptions of CIT. Methods: Program directors and leaders at 102 U.S. hematology/oncology (hem/onc) fellowship programs were contacted via email to invite their respective trainees and faculty to answer a 32-question cross-sectional survey. The study was IRB excempt. The survey was developed with the University of Chicago Survey Lab. Four thematic areas were interrogated: current level of experience in CI, knowledge of PI roles and responsibilities (R/R), areas of perceived weakness/lack of confidence related to CI, and interest in a course that teaches CI. Response frequencies and descriptive statistics were analyzed, with the goal of informing future targeted educational initiatives. Results: 207 respondents from 47/102 (46%) institutions completed the survey between 5/2023 – 11/2023. Respondents included 92 (40%) trainees and 137 (60%) attendings, 47% were men, 47% women and 57% had more than 9 years of experience as an attending post-speciality training. Among attendings, only 4.4% reported never participating in CIT, compared to 55.4% of trainees. Informal or “on the job” teaching was the most common method of learning PI R/R with response rate of 58% in attendings and 62% in trainees. Trainees reported lack of confidence and need for education in all aspects of CIT, and 85% indicated high level of interest in enrolling in a CIT course. Most attendings reported lack of confidence in areas of budget development (57%), quality of life (70%) and translational correlatives (51%). Others reported feeling weaknesses in designing primary and secondary end points (32%), letter of intent writing (33%) and creating protocols (31%). 53% of the attendings were interested in enrolling in a CIT course. Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first reported survey formally assessing current perceptions of preparedness in CIT within hem/onc in the U.S. Our findings strongly indicate that CIT educational gaps exist, even for attendings with prior CIT experience, and that training deficits are marked for trainees. A structured, practical, and widely-accessible CIT program is urgently needed to prepare the future hem/onc workforce. Acknowledgement: MERITS program and Section of Hem/Onc at University of Chicago.
Shergill et al. (Sat,) studied this question.