Residency program policies re: funding for travel/meeting attendance

[Sulfinator]

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Just curious how other programs out there are providing funds or re-imbursement for travel to national meetings (assuming you are presenting a poster or have a platform presentation). What qualifications or restrictions do you have to meet/deal with? Are you limited in how many meetings you can attend per year, etc.?

 

[brainsalads]

At my program, UAB, if you get an abstract (poster or oral) accepted, you get full expenses paid. That means, flight, registration, hotel room, and $150/day for food, for the days of the meeting. You are also not docked vacation days to goThere is not a limit on the amount of conferences you can go to, as long as you keep pumping out research and get accepted. I have not talked to a resident in any other program that has such great support for research, most people only get a set amount per year for travel ($1000-$1500), and this amount is rarely enough to pay all expenses of a conference. For instance, USCAP was in Vancouver this year and the trip cost $3000, of which I was fully reimbursed. Its a great incentive to do research, and it only helps you by adding lines to your CV and engendering a great academic atmosphere. I was able to go to 7 conferences in the past year, of course I had to work a lot to do the research, but its been great. And its a good opportunity to network.

 

[Euchromatin]

My program will also pay your fees to go to a meeting if you are presenting a poster/abstract - airfare, hotel, conference registration, daily food allowance (although not as much per day as the previous poster from UAB). There isn't an official limit on how many meetings per year each resident can go to that I'm aware of...although most of our residents aren't super academics/research-oriented, so I don't know of anyone going to more than 2 or 3 meetings in a given year.

I seem to recall from interviewing that more or less all programs are willing to pay for their residents to go to meetings if they have a poster/abstract. Is anyone at a program where they wouldn't pay for this?

 

[mlw03]

I don't remember the details because I never participated, but I don't think my program paid for everything if someone was presenting. If I remember right, a presenter got $600 towards their expenses (yes, I know that doesn't cover a whole trip) and then got an additional 600 if a paper was submitted (didn't have to be accepted) based on that work. The department got a little tired apparently of residents doing a bunch of poster presentations and then rarely getting a publication out of the work.

 

[Sulfinator]

The reason I bring it up is because last week we got the following email from our administration:

"The Department of Pathology has issued new rules regarding resident travel to meetings. The Department will still fund travel to present an initial abstract; however, departmental funding for subsequent abstracts will not be available until the manuscript based on that initial abstract has been accepted for publication. Furthermore, it appears that residents who have already had abstracts accepted for more than one upcoming meeting will not be funded for more than one of those meetings unless the accepted-for-publication requirement has already been met (even if the Residency Director has already approved the travel). The resident book fund of $750/year can still be used to fund travel to meetings."

We are supposed to meet with the department chairman later this week to discuss this policy (and potentially lobby for changing it). I just wanted to see what other programs out there were doing and whether or not this new policy seemed on par with that of other programs. So far my feeling is that this new policy is significantly more stringent than that of most other programs.

 

[TMZ2007]

We got a similar message about a year ago; get paid to present but then no further funding until original abstract is submitted for publication (not accepted, as in your example). We then got a fixed amount of money for all educational expenses (books, travel, etc.)

Your program likely knows very well what other programs are doing thanks to the PRODs listserv and they are likely not doing anything too outside the norm.

That being said, as with just about all forms of negative reinforcement, this change in policy will likely have the effect of discouraging conference participation and not encouraging manuscript publication...

 

[pathstudent]

The reason I bring it up is because last week we got the following email from our administration:

"The Department of Pathology has issued new rules regarding resident travel to meetings. The Department will still fund travel to present an initial abstract; however, departmental funding for subsequent abstracts will not be available until the manuscript based on that initial abstract has been accepted for publication. Furthermore, it appears that residents who have already had abstracts accepted for more than one upcoming meeting will not be funded for more than one of those meetings unless the accepted-for-publication requirement has already been met (even if the Residency Director has already approved the travel). The resident book fund of $750/year can still be used to fund travel to meetings."

We are supposed to meet with the department chairman later this week to discuss this policy (and potentially lobby for changing it). I just wanted to see what other programs out there were doing and whether or not this new policy seemed on par with that of other programs. So far my feeling is that this new policy is significantly more stringent than that of most other programs.

It is a hard ball move but will likely backfire against the program. Residents either won't bother to participate in research projects or they won't be able to go present an accepted abstract because they still have an in-progress publication.

 

[schrute]

We had $2250/yr in book funds/travel money (plus a 1 time 1k for a computer purchase); $1000 for the first paper/abstract/presentation, $500 per subsequent paper/abstract/presentation.
Per meeting.
Didn't count against vaca, but GME limit is like 10-15 days annually.

 

[mlw03]

That's crap. Call their bluff. See how they like the resident and faculty research output dropping in the toilet.

The reason I bring it up is because last week we got the following email from our administration:

"The Department of Pathology has issued new rules regarding resident travel to meetings. The Department will still fund travel to present an initial abstract; however, departmental funding for subsequent abstracts will not be available until the manuscript based on that initial abstract has been accepted for publication. Furthermore, it appears that residents who have already had abstracts accepted for more than one upcoming meeting will not be funded for more than one of those meetings unless the accepted-for-publication requirement has already been met (even if the Residency Director has already approved the travel). The resident book fund of $750/year can still be used to fund travel to meetings."

We are supposed to meet with the department chairman later this week to discuss this policy (and potentially lobby for changing it). I just wanted to see what other programs out there were doing and whether or not this new policy seemed on par with that of other programs. So far my feeling is that this new policy is significantly more stringent than that of most other programs.

 

[KCShaw]

Actually, why would a department really want to pay to have you go present the SAME thing at a bunch of different conferences? You've done the work once, you should get to follow it through once. This just sounds like they've cut people off from doing some nubbin of work and getting 5 trips around the country totaling weeks away from the program all on the program's dime. Heck, some conference rules prevent you doing that anyhow. Maybe I'm reading that differently than everyone else. Now, if you've done separate work, with separate abstracts and the possibility of separate article publications, then sure, go present each one of those at different meetings and the program should pay -- within reason. But IMO it's easier to say "we'll pay for 1/2/3 conferences per year, no more" than this publication thing -- it can take a year plus to get publications through sometimes. If their logic is simply to get more things actually published, well, that's their prerogative.

From my recollection, anyone who had something accepted for presentation could go to at least 1 major conference per year on the program's dime. I don't remember what the cap was in terms of how many conferences one could go to within a year on the program's money, but I think one existed -- I seem to recall someone at some point lining up quite a few and trying for some international conference(s) and eventually someone had to draw the line.

 

[oldfatman]

Trying to play hardball with your program director is like bringing a knife to a gunfight.

 

[pathstudent]

Actually, why would a department really want to pay to have you go present the SAME thing at a bunch of different conferences? You've done the work once, you should get to follow it through once. This just sounds like they've cut people off from doing some nubbin of work and getting 5 trips around the country totaling weeks away from the program all on the program's dime. Heck, some conference rules prevent you doing that anyhow. Maybe I'm reading that differently than everyone else. Now, if you've done separate work, with separate abstracts and the possibility of separate article publications, then sure, go present each one of those at different meetings and the program should pay -- within reason. But IMO it's easier to say "we'll pay for 1/2/3 conferences per year, no more" than this publication thing -- it can take a year plus to get publications through sometimes. If their logic is simply to get more things actually published, well, that's their prerogative.

From my recollection, anyone who had something accepted for presentation could go to at least 1 major conference per year on the program's dime. I don't remember what the cap was in terms of how many conferences one could go to within a year on the program's money, but I think one existed -- I seem to recall someone at some point lining up quite a few and trying for some international conference(s) and eventually someone had to draw the line.

That's a worthwhile point. I could see how they wouldn't want to pay for that.

I thought it meant that if you went to USCAP for free once, you couldn't go free again until you got that poster into a pub.

 

[Sulfinator]

That's a worthwhile point. I could see how they wouldn't want to pay for that.

I thought it meant that if you went to USCAP for free once, you couldn't go free again until you got that poster into a pub.

That is what the department chairman is saying. He's not complaining about the same old thing getting taken to several different conferences on the department's dime. He's saying that if you go to any meeting and present a poster, the department will not fund your travel to any other meeting (for the rest of your residency, presumably) until you have turned that poster into a publication.

 

[KCShaw]

That is what the department chairman is saying. He's not complaining about the same old thing getting taken to several different conferences on the department's dime. He's saying that if you go to any meeting and present a poster, the department will not fund your travel to any other meeting (for the rest of your residency, presumably) until you have turned that poster into a publication.

Seems a bit harsh, at least in comparison to most of the policies about such things that I hear about or heard on the interview trail back in the day. I guess I get the theory, since it's probably accurate to assume that many, if not most, presentations die after the conference. A lot of residents probably wouldn't go as far as a presentation were it not buying them a few paid days away at a conference, but what departments really want are publications. It's taking the Old Ways and tightening the screws. Program directors perhaps understand the value of conferences to residents above and beyond a mere presentation, as well as the utility to the resident of even -some- research to get as far as an abstract/presentation/poster irrespective of publication -- department chairs on the other hand have different goals and directives from up the chain. I would be somewhat interested to know whether the culture there becomes one of creating a lot of publications, or residents just going to 0 or 1 conference or taking book fund/personal money to go and screwing the rest.

 

[KluverB]

...He's saying that if you go to any meeting and present a poster, the department will not fund your travel to any other meeting (for the rest of your residency, presumably) until you have turned that poster into a publication.

If it keeps the residents who take a bunch of days off to present a poster at a national meeting of a case report or some other "useless research", for example, on the institution's dime no less, while the rest of the residents have to cover their absence, I'm all for this.

 

[pathstudent]

That is what the department chairman is saying. He's not complaining about the same old thing getting taken to several different conferences on the department's dime. He's saying that if you go to any meeting and present a poster, the department will not fund your travel to any other meeting (for the rest of your residency, presumably) until you have turned that poster into a publication.

If that's the case just pick your USCAP conference wisely. You don't want to get a free tript to Detroit in early March if it is being held in Miami the nest year!

 

[Sulfinator]

Well, after meeting with the department Chair, it seems that the email we received was overstating things a bit. The Chair was conciliatory and indicated that no one was going to be starved of funding for travel as long as their abstract was a legitimate step towards a peer-reviewed publicaiton (i.e., even if you present at a meeting and do not get a publication out of it before you have to submit another abstract to another meeting, you will still be funded to go to the second meeting as long as all your efforts appear to be geared toward publishing significant/useful/meaningful research). All this has yet to be put into writing regarding the fine details, but I'm very pleased with how the Chair interacted with the residents over this issue. He really is just trying to make sure that the department is not spending money to send people to present meager case reports that have been thoughtlessly 'cut and pasted' from the electronic medical record and that have minimal to no publication value.

 

[KCShaw]

Be cautious. Just a good rule of thumb when what someone puts in writing ain't the same as what they say to your face. It may be that the letters/emails being sent were filtered by chinese whispers and you've merely gotten clarification from the horse's mouth, which is fine and quite common, but folks who lay out new policies just to see which stick and which they claim isn't 'really' what they meant only when a bunch of people start asking, can be dangerous folks.

 

[Sulfinator]

Be cautious. Just a good rule of thumb when what someone puts in writing ain't the same as what they say to your face. It may be that the letters/emails being sent were filtered by chinese whispers and you've merely gotten clarification from the horse's mouth, which is fine and quite common, but folks who lay out new policies just to see which stick and which they claim isn't 'really' what they meant only when a bunch of people start asking, can be dangerous folks.

A good point, but for now I give him the benefit of the doubt.