I've been asked by an anonymous user through PM to detail the process of applying to the Holman Pathway. I've provided a step-by-step guide below for those who are also interested:
#1: Make sure your department Chair and PD are cool with you doing Holman.
The
minimum requirements for Holman are 18 months of research with 80% commitment to lab. That means that your residency program will have a shortage in resident manpower during that time. There are a few ways that I've seen programs handle this:
a. Faculty see patients themselves and residents are not required to cover all attendings. This is only possible at programs that are really committed to research and pretty rare overall. Vanderbilt is one example (not sure if they still do it).
b. Faculty accept reduced resident coverage. This means the Holman resident covers that faculty member one day per week or for "20%" of the time. In practice, this never works out properly because of the way Rad Onc is setup. You will be likely spending 2 to 2.5 days per week on clinical activity. When I first started Holman at UCSF, this was the way it was done.
c. Hire on another resident outside the Match to beef up coverage. This is tough to do due to steep ACGME/RRC requirements where you have to prove that you have the clinical volume to take on a new resident. This is the current configuration at UCSF.
2. Identify a mentor
Under ideal circumstances, your mentor should be clinical faculty in your Rad Onc department who also runs a lab. This will help when you run into eventual conflicts with lab and clinical duties. At bigger research institutions however, there is a LOT of interesting research going on outside the Rad Onc department. One benefit of pursuing research at an outside, affiliated facility is that you may be physically too far to return for clinical duties in all but urgent situations. However, as alluded above, basic science faculty have little/no clout in your department. Make it clear to your mentor that they do not have to fund you. You will be receiving your resident salary and can additionally apply for research monies (detailed below).
3. Fill out the Holman application
Link is
here. You need letters of reference from your Chair, PD and mentor. Your Chair/PD also have to cite that you are clinically superior and therefore may undergo abbreviated clinical training. You also have to write a brief summary of your research goals, methods, and infrastructure. For those of you who've applied for NIH grants, you'll note that this application is very short. The ABR essentially rubber stamps your application and they rely heavily on your department to rigorously select appropriate candidates. To my knowledge, only one person has ever been rejected from the Holman Pathway. The reason was that the Board felt that their research facilities were inadequate to do whatever they were proposing.
Holman has three application deadlines in on Mar 15, Jul 15, and Nov 15. You should give them a good 1.5 - 2 months to process your application and give you the green light.
4. Fill out annual Holman progress reports
Every year you, your PD, and mentor will have to detail the progress of your Holman research. Basically you have to report how your specific aims are progressing, where/if you presented or published your work, and if you are adhering to Holman guidelines. There are no requirements for Holman in terms of research productivity. If you don't produce a single abstract from your work, you can still graduate.
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Some final thoughts:
I don't recommend doing Holman the last 18 months of your residency (if you can help it) for two reasons. One, when you interview for jobs, you will not have any published data (because you will still be in the lab) and two, I think it is risky to do 20% clinical activity the last 18 months of your residency right before you start seeing patients independently.
Holman does not provide research funding. You have to do that independently. All Holman residents are encouraged to apply for an
RSNA grant which gives you $50K for a year. It's not a ton of money but it will look very good on your application. Also, since money is involved, RSNA grant applications are screened rigorously for scientific merit. Just because you got Holman doesn't mean that an RSNA grant is a freebie.
If you have any questions or commentary, feel free to chime in.
