Protected Time Posted on January 14, 2008 F. Xavier Castellanos (bio) offers advice about fulfilling career goals in a world where clinical needs are infinite.

Assuming that someone has gone through this process and really is starting to have their t-shirt label, their identification in the field, and they've gotten a K Award, they've published papers, they're presenting at national conferences, they're organizing symposia at national conferences, which is a very nice thing for young people to do — is to pair up with a senior person who'll provide the name recognition, and the junior person does the actual work of contacting the colleagues and saying, "My mentor and I would like to organize this symposium at this national meeting. I'll do the coordinating, et cetera." And so that's a way of networking, a way of getting that identification.

So someone who's doing all of that then is going to move, let's say, or is going to stay and move up the ladder to an academic position as, typically, an assistant professor someplace, as an instructor, as the first rank. Then the questions have to be: What's expected, and what's going to be provided? So time is the most essential thing: How much time? No one gets infinite time anymore, but realistic programs realize that if you already have your plan of research worked out and you know exactly what you're going to do and you're already at the edge of that, it's still going to take you probably three years to get fully funded to get that going, and it could be five. So someone needs to be thinking in terms of those kinds of timelines.

And the usual good package, because it's sustainable and is the best most people can get early on, is 50% protected time. And how to make that work, if they don't already have a grant that buys them out or that kind of thing, is tricky. It needs to not be a little bit of every day. There need to be full days that are clinical and full days that are not because clinical needs are infinite. We'll never run out of patients, and we're human. We can't help but extend ourselves. And so, faced with someone in front of me that needs to have this addressed versus a grant deadline or a paper that needs to be written, those are abstract, long-term sorts of goals that just pale by comparison.

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