Outcomes of a mentored research competition for authoring pediatric case reports in chiropractic

A chiropractic pediatric specialist often encounters novel clinical findings not reported currently in the literature. This project matched board certified chiropractic pediatric specialists with a mentor experienced in scientific writing to co-author a research paper to add to the literature base available on chiropractic pediatric practice.

Clinicians who had received their Diplomate in Clinical Chiropractic Pediatrics and mentors in scientific writing were teamed up. Two surveys were conducted to collect quantitative data, and focus groups were held to gather qualitative data about the overall experience of the mentor and mentee (clinicians) participating in the study. The first survey was sent to the clinicians to gather information about their research idea and their experience in research. The second survey was conducted upon project completion by clinicians and mentors. A project wiki was used as a communication strategy.

Ten reports were submitted by authorship teams. Time spent on this project was an average of 58 hours by clinicians and 36 hours by the mentors. Mentors aided by adding content material, editing manuscripts, and educating the clinicians in the art of writing a paper. Improvements for this project included clearer mentoring guidelines and not using the wiki as a communication venue.

The project ultimately fulfilled the goal of using a mentorship model to facilitate scientific writing education and ease the anxiety of authoring a first publication. The overall experience was "good"; however, there are opportunities for improvement.