The Vanishing Physician-Scientist?

In this book, leading physician-scientists and academic physicians examine the problem from a variety of perspectives: historical, demographic, scientific, cultural, sociological, and economic.

Dr. Andrew I. Schafer is the E. Hugh Luckey Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and Physician-in-Chief at New York Presbyterian Hospital–Weill Cornell Medical Center. He is past president of the American Society of Hematology, the founding editor in chief of its publication, The Hematologist, and President-Elect of the Association of Professors of Medicine.

In The Vanishing Physician-Scientist?, Dr. Andrew I. Schafer makes the case that truly effective translational research can go from bench to bedside and back again in dynamic fashion; he describes a view of the future in which physician-scientists will be members of research teams. This book does an excellent job of placing physician-scientists in historical context and highlighting the fact that the problem of the endangered physician-scientist is not a new one. The Vanishing Physician-Scientist? outlines a long-term problem that is likely to get worse, and, most important, provides a number of possible solutions.Given the current constraints—on NIH-funded research and an understandable retrenchment for funding by industry and foundations—its descriptions of strategies that have been successful in the past and are likely to be successful in the future are more valuable than ever.