title: An adaptive approach to facilitating research productivity in a primary care clinical department.
abstract: Efforts to foster the growth of a department's or school's research mission can be informed by known correlates of research productivity, but the specific strategies to be adopted will be highly context-dependent, influenced by local, national, and discipline-specific needs and resources. The authors describe a multifaceted approach-informed by a working model of organizational research productivity-by which the University of Minnesota Department of Family Medicine and Community Health (Twin Cities campus) successfully increased its collective research productivity during a 10-year period (1997-2007) and maintained these increases over time.Facing barriers to recruitment of faculty investigators, the department focused instead on nurturing high-potential investigators among their current faculty via a new, centrally coordinated research program, with provision of training, protected time, technical resources, mentoring, and a scholarly culture to support faculty research productivity. Success of these initiatives is documented by the following: substantial increases in the department's external research funding, rise to a sustained top-five ranking based on National Institutes of Health funding to U.S. family medicine departments, later-stage growth in the faculty's publishing record, increased research capacity among the faculty, and a definitive maturation of the department's research mission. The authors offer their perspectives on three apparent drivers of success with broad applicability-namely, effective leadership, systemic culture change, and the self-awareness to adapt to changes in the local, institutional, and national research environment.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, MN 55414, USA. weber005@umn.edu
authors.forename: Anne Marie
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Weber-Main
authors.forename: Deborah A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Finstad
authors.forename: Bruce A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Center
authors.forename: Carole J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Bland
mesh_terms: D000046:Academic Medical Centers / Q000191:economics / Q000458:organization & administration*; D035843:Biomedical Research; D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D005180:Faculty, Medical / Q000458:organization & administration; D005194:Family Practice / Q000191:economics / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006801:Humans; D007857:Leadership; D017146:Models, Organizational; D015279:Organizational Culture; D009937:Organizational Objectives; D011320:Primary Health Care; D012106:Research; D012109:Research Support as Topic; D012201:Reward