Climate Surveys of Biomedical PhD Students and Training Faculty Members in the Time of Covid

  1. Deepti Ramadoss
  2. Meghan McCord
  3. John P. Horn

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Abstract

In July 2020, four months into the disruption of normal life caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, we assessed the institutional climate within the School of Medicine. Voluntary surveys were completed by 135 graduate students in 11 PhD-granting programs and by 83 members of the graduate training faculty. Several themes emerged. PhD students work hard, but the number of hours spent on research-related activities has declined during the pandemic. The students are worried about the pandemic’s impact on their research productivity, consequent delays in their graduation, and diminished future job prospects. Many late stage PhD students feel they do not have adequate time or resources to plan for their future careers. Symptoms of anxiety and/or depression are prevalent in 51% of the students, based on answers to standardized questions. Most students report they have strong mentoring relationships with their faculty advisors and like their programs, but they identify to a lesser extent with the medical school as a whole. Faculty think highly of their graduate students and are also worried about the pandemic’s impact upon productivity and the welfare of students. Students are interested in access to an Ombuds office, which is currently being organized by the medical school. Moving forward, the school needs to address issues of bias, faculty diversity, support for mentor training, professional development, and the imposter syndrome. We must also work to create a climate in which many more graduate students feel that they are valued members of the academic medicine community.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2022.01.06.475246: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2022.01.06.475246v1 on bioRxiv