Individual Attributes Affecting Physician-Scientist Partnership in Research and Knowledge Transfer

Abstract

Biomedical research has generated revolutionary scientific discoveries. However, it takes on average 17 years to turn about 14% of research findings into changes that benefit patients. Scientist-physician partnership (SPP) plays an essential role in biomedical knowledge generation and transfer. Our previous qualitative study identified many factors that influence SPP in knowledge production and transfer in medicine at personal, institutional and socio-cultural levels. However, the prevalence of their impacts on scientist-physician partnership and transfer of knowledge is unknown. This study focuses on the influence of individual factors on SPP effectiveness. We hypothesized professional identity has a positive effect on both academic and clinical outcomes; personal motivations influence SPP effectiveness; personality has an impact on clinical outcome and academic outcome. We posit professional degree moderates the relationship between academic outcome and clinical outcome. We surveyed 440 scientists and physicians to test these hypotheses. Our data reveals that: (1) Professional identity has a positive effect on both academic outcome and clinical outcome, and satisfaction on process effectiveness (SPE) of collaboration fully mediates the role of professional identity on both academic outcome and clinical outcome; (2) Both recognition motivation and challenge motivation have a negative effect on satisfaction on process effectiveness of collaboration; (3) Introversion personality has a negative direct effect on academic outcome; and Conscientiousness has a positive effect on SPE; (4) Professional degree does not moderate the relationship between academic outcome and clinical outcome. However, several relationships between personal attributes and SPP outcomes are stronger in PhDs in than MDs. This study contributes to the literature on the roles of professional identity, personality, motivation, and professional degree on cross-professional collaboration such as SPP. It has several practical implications on how to identify right collaborators and how the traditional belief on the role of physician scientists should be re- assessed.