IT’S A PERENNIAL problem in academic hospital medicine: Only seasoned and senior authors have protected time to do research, let alone write that research up and put together a grant proposal.
According to Christopher Bonafide, MD, MSCE, an academic hospitalist in the section of hospital medicine of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), his group does have a protected-time program. Clinical hospitalists who are accepted into that program can dedicate between 5% and 20% of their time to work on a research project for between six and 12 months.
But as Dr. Bonafide points out, most academic hospitalists—including those at his hospital—don’t have any such carve-out. “The vast majority of hospitalists, particularly at children’s hospitals, may be interested in participating in academic work,” he says, “but it can be incredibly difficult to get even a small slice of protected time.”
“The retreats are very much focused on mentorship and career development.”
Christopher Bonafide, MD, MSCE
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
That led him and a group of other CHOP faculty to organize writing retreats. Starting in 2022, those retreats are held quarterly to help colleagues work on papers about research, educational or quality improvement projects, or on grant proposals they want to submit.
A study they published this April in the Journal of Hospital Medicine examined the retreats that CHOP faculty held in 2022 and 2023. Of 24 different papers that retreat attendees worked on, 12 have been accepted and six are under review, while two of four grant proposals written are also being reviewed.
Dr. Bonafide, the study’s lead author, points out that there’s no way to quantify how many fewer papers participants may have written or had accepted without attending a retreat. But he notes that among attendees surveyed, 78% found the gatherings to be “extremely helpful” in advancing their writing project and 89% felt their paper or grant was of higher quality due to participating. In addition, 78% believed they were able to submit their grant or paper sooner because of attending and 70% reported feeling less stressed about their writing as a result.
Broad participation
Dr. Bonafide says the idea for the retreats originated in conversations that he and his colleagues have held with senior researchers from across the country who come together to write grants. “Researchers from different institutions rent a house and work intensively on writing a grant over a short period of time,” he explains.
He also notes that the PRIS (Pediatric Research in Inpatient Settings) Network held a similar type of meeting in October 2023 in Park City, Utah, to focus on writing grants. The organization hopes to hold similar retreats in different locations once a year.
But Dr. Bonafide points out that the CHOP retreats have a slightly different focus than those others. While the PRIS network focuses on writing “really big grants,” Dr. Bonafide says, “the CHOP retreats are very much focused on mentorship and career development.”
The first two retreats the CHOP faculty organized were really a small pilot test that included a handful of researchers, all of whom worked with one principal investigator. Later retreats broadened participation to the pediatric hospital medicine division and then to CHOP members in general pediatrics. “We then brought in even more collaborators,” says Dr. Bonafide. “One was a nurse scientist who we work closely with on some projects. We also invited a research staff member who isn’t a physician or a nurse. We’re excited to keep doing that.”
Each retreat includes an average of eight participants, although some retreats have had up to 10 people. And each retreat goes for three days and two nights and is held in different locations within a two-hour radius of the hospital. Scheduled writing blocks range from 45 to 90 minutes, with plenty of breaks built in throughout the day for feedback, exercise and preparing meals together.
The retreats are also held during the week so they won’t interfere with participants’ family obligations on the weekends.
“We think of this as work,” says Dr. Bonafide. “We’re going to a beautiful place”—one retreat was held at the New Jersey shore, another was on a farm—”but this is not a vacation.” Due to an internal CHOP grant and to financial support from the CHOP Research Institute, participants don’t pay anything out of pocket to attend, although they do fund their own travel and bring ingredients for shared meal preparation.
Optional feedback
The writing retreats are reserved for research or grant writing, Dr. Bonafide says, not creative writing. Moreover, they are not formally set up to be instructional.
“These aren’t meant to be grant writing 101,” he notes. “When fellows are participating, we make sure they have a writing plan or outline for what they’re going to work on during the retreat so they can hit the ground running.”
At the same time, he adds, informal activities like having coffee together or going on walks “is where people share writing tips or talk about different ways to approach a writing problem.”
Feedback sessions are also designed to share ideas, although attending feedback sessions with the entire group is optional. “People have different comfort levels in terms of the feedback they want,” Dr. Bonafide says. “Some welcome rapid-fire comments, but others may want to ask one person a really focused question. We want to meet people where they are so no one is overwhelmed. We want people to choose their own adventure.”
Networking and community
As much as the retreats advance writing, they also go a long way to foster networking and community—factors that are particularly needed coming out of the pandemic.
“It’s a great way,” says Dr. Bonafide says, “to get to know people you may see two or three times a week in the office. But you may never had sat down and had a long conversation with them or talked about their work.” In qualitative comments colleagues submit after participating, “people’s experience with the retreats repeatedly come up as a satisfier.”
For future retreats, Dr. Bonafide says he and his fellow organizers are looking at ways to provide a childcare stipend so potential participants who don’t have someone who can step up fully for home coverage could attend for 48 hours.
He and the other faculty are also looking into expanding each retreat to encompass several houses.
“We certainly have more demand for retreat slots than we’re able to meet at this time,” he points out. “I would love to be able to more evenly match that.”
Phyllis Maguire is Executive Editor of Today’s Hospitalist.
