Welcome to Jumpstarting Your Academic Career, an American Association of Neurological Surgeons online course. I'm your course director, Dr. Ryan Ormond from the University of Colorado School of Medicine. So let's say you're a resident and you've decided you'd like to pursue an academic career. You may be asking yourself, now what? Or perhaps you've managed to find an academic position, now what? Many individuals find themselves in these situations, well-trained as neurosurgeons but not mentored well in how to prepare for an academic career or how to succeed once there. And with a changing world of academic medical practice, this process is getting more complicated all the time. And time constraints are making the process ever more challenging to successfully navigate. As members of the Van Wagenen Collegium of the AANS, we discussed things we could do to help improve mentored learning regarding academic practice. It soon became clear that members of the Collegium in academic practice may actually be the best equipped to act as mentors. This course serves as an answer to the question of how best to prepare for and begin an academic career from the perspective of individuals who have developed and led successful academic careers. The course learning objectives include being aware of the different paths available into academic neurosurgery, knowing how to prepare in residency and early practice for a successful academic career, and knowing about the different kinds of enfolded and postgraduate fellowship experiences and their value. First question is, what is academic neurosurgery? And the broad scope of academic neurosurgery includes the traditional quadruple threat academic, which includes clinical subspecialty, resident education, research lab, and administration, which can be institutional or organized neurosurgery. Focused academic practice, which is typically a clinical subspecialty and one or two of the others. It includes medical schools without residency programs and also includes affiliated private practices with resident education affiliation, which is also called privademic practice. This course outline is as follows. It's divided into a section specifically designed for in-training experience for residents, including writing, publication, grants, and organizing your CV, teaching and learning, a discussion about fellowships, subspecialization, how to perform a job search effectively in academic practice, contract negotiation and mentorship, and then for early career academicians, writing, how this differs from residency, faculty development, how to find mentors, research collaborations, et cetera, and promotion and tenure and how it works. We conclude the course with a number of case vignettes of successful academic careers. In conclusion, there are a wide variety of academic neurosurgical career pathways fitting several different practice models and interests. It does require some thought, advice, and insight to find the right pathway for you. Hard work and good mentorship will help you avoid common pitfalls. And seek advice early, prepare as best you can, and academic practice can still be a very exciting and rewarding career path.

Jumpstarting Your Academic Career

American Association of Neurological Surgeons

neurosurgeons

academic career

mentorship