Sustaining the Biomedical Research Workforce: Medical School Leadership in Supporting Research Learners

Abstract

Biomedical graduate students and postdoctoral researchers contribute to scientific innovation, driving discovery and advancing health solutions. However, their success depends on more than research skills; they require strong mentorship, mental health support, and inclusive training environments. Despite the critical importance of research learners, the current structures at many medical schools prioritize clinical learners, often leaving research learners without adequate institutional support. Unique challenges, including prolonged training, reliance on a single mentor, and dual roles as learners and researchers, are compounded by high stress, ineffective mentorship, and underaddressed mistreatment, particularly for underrepresented groups. This commentary highlights the urgent need for medical schools to address these issues through targeted interventions. Institutions must implement proactive mental health strategies, strengthen culturally aware and effective mentorship, and foster inclusive research environments that promote equity and psychological safety. By prioritizing these efforts, medical schools can support research learners’ success, reduce attrition, and cultivate a diverse and innovative biomedical research workforce. This approach is an investment in the future of biomedical research and its long-term sustainability.

Biomedical research is the foundation of academic health centers, driving innovation, advancing medical knowledge, and sustaining National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding.¹ However, this foundation is beginning to crack: the scientific workforce faces unprecedented instability due to funding fluctuations and a shrinking pipeline of future scientists.^2,3 To ensure its long-term sustainability, institutions must take an active role in shoring up the future of the research workforce by safeguarding research training.

Medical schools and academic research institutions are critical in stabilizing the biomedical workforce by investing in research learners—graduate students and postdoctoral scholars—at the forefront of discovery. Unlike clinical training, which follows structured competency-based pathways, research training is prolonged, mentor dependent, and highly sensitive to funding and policy changes. Without strong institutional support, the future of biomedical research may be compromised as fewer trainees see a clear and viable career path in science.

These challenges coincide with a shift in the research landscape. According to the National Science Foundation, only 27% of life science PhD graduates in 2022 planned for an academic career—a 55% decrease since 1992.^4-8 Similarly, postdoctoral training in biological and biomedical sciences decreased from 75% to 60% between 2002 and 2022.⁹ Institutions can help reverse these trends by addressing the unique aspects of research training that can drive promising scientists away from this career path. This report outlines key strategies institutions can implement to strengthen the biomedical research workforce and provide research learners with the stability, support, and mentorship they need to thrive.

Supporting Research Learners: Recognizing and Addressing Key Challenges

It is necessary to understand the distinct academic and professional challenges research learners face compared with their clinical counterparts (Table 1). Both groups experience high-pressure and high-stakes training. However, whereas clinical learners follow a structured, competency-based training model with multiple mentors, intentional institutional oversight, and defined durations, research learners navigate prolonged, mentor-dependent training with uncertain milestones, unpredictable research outcomes, and unclear career paths. We outline key areas requiring institutional attention and propose actionable solutions to enhance research learner well-being and professional development.

Table 1.

Clinical Versus Research Learner Stressors

Stressor	Clinical learners	Research learners
Nature of training	Structured, competency-based, hands-on patient care with clear progression Clearly defined goals	Independent, mentored research with unstructured outcomes Heterogeneous goals
Mentorship and oversight	Multiple, short-term supervisors (attending physicians, residents, faculty) Built-in oversight with high evaluation pressure	Single, long-term mentor (or co-mentor) Misalignment of goals can hinder career progress
Performance metrics	Competency-based benchmarks (board exams, rotations, clinical proficiency) Predictable path to graduation	Success based on scientific contributions, which is variable (data, publications, grants) No guaranteed endpoint
Training-specific stressors	Standardized testing and rankings High-stakes decision-making Patient care responsibility	Pressure to publish Uncertain research outcomes Funding instability
Work-life balance and personal well-being	Long shifts Duty-hour limits that provide structure	Undefined hours Expected to work off hours Pressure to produce results
Team dynamics and collaboration	Fast-paced teamwork Predictable hierarchical structures Interprofessional collaboration	Reliance on individual contributions Variable hierarchical structures Collaborative but potential for isolation
Financial pressures	New debt accumulation Structured, predictable earning trajectory	Earning modest stipends Funding instability Uncertain earning potential
Factors in career advancement	Structured, multifaceted evaluation Clerkship evaluations, board scores and ranking Letters from multiple faculty members	Significant weight on publications, grants, and a single mentor’s letter High-stakes mentorship and sponsorship relationships
Job market prospects	Competitive but structured residency and fellowship placement	Limited tenure-track faculty positions, yet training lacks preparation for non–tenure track careers
Institutional oversight	Schools held accountable through accreditation Clear, standardized milestones set by LCME and AAMC	Progress dependent on institution, mentor, and department policies No standardized governing body

Abbreviations: AAMC, Association of American Medical Colleges; LCME, Liaison Committee on Medical Education.

Addressing Mental Health in Research Training

Research trainees face significant challenges that can profoundly impact their mental health and well-being.^10-12 Research learners operate in prolonged uncertainty, where success is contingent on unpredictable experimental outcomes, publication acceptance, and securing funding. Evans et al¹¹ reported that 41% of graduate students experienced moderate to severe anxiety and 39% experienced moderate to severe depression. Biomedical PhD students also exhibit significantly higher levels of anxiety and depression than their medical student peers.¹³ The high failure rate inherent to research, with limited institutional oversight and heavy dependence on a single mentor for research expertise, skill building, and career guidance, can lead to isolation, self-doubt, and career instability.^14,15 These challenges are further compounded for trainees from marginalized backgrounds,^16-18 who often face additional barriers to support and inclusion. These pressures, combined with the stigma surrounding mental health in academic research, may make it particularly difficult for trainees to seek help without fear of professional repercussions.¹⁹

Improving access to mental health services tailored to the unique pressures of research learners is essential.²⁰ Institutions should adopt a proactive approach by embedding mental health literacy and stress management education early in research training to equip trainees with coping strategies before encountering significant challenges. The NIH Office of Intramural Training and Education developed a wellness-focused resiliency training series designed for research learners and their advisors. Leveraging the NIH Office of Intramural Training and Education’s Becoming a Resilient Scientist and Raising a Resilient Scientist trainings during orientation or shortly after research learners arrive on campus can help normalize discussions around well-being through structured mentorship, peer networks, and professional development.¹⁰

Institutions can redesign research training infrastructures to prevent or mitigate avoidable stressors.²¹ Such training includes promoting clear expectations about research timelines and setbacks, which can help trainees reframe failure as an inherent part of the scientific process rather than a personal shortcoming. Providing structured mentorship networks rather than sole reliance on a single mentor can mitigate isolation and ensure consistent support throughout training. Competency-based training frameworks offer a structured approach to integrating resilience-building and professional development into the training of research learners.²² These models emphasize skills beyond technical expertise, including adaptability, self-efficacy, and career planning, which can help trainees navigate inherent research challenges.

Institutions should offer confidential counseling, peer support, and stress management workshops to encourage help-seeking behaviors and reduce stigma. Resilience training programs are associated with reduced stress, anxiety, and presenteeism while improving self-efficacy and adaptability.^10,23 Institutional support for outreach events can also enhance research learners’ mental health and well-being by fostering community engagement and a sense of purpose. These activities provide opportunities for connection, help reduce stress, and promote a sense of accomplishment.²⁴ By embedding proactive mental health education, strengthening structured support systems, and normalizing discussions around stress management, institutions can better prepare research learners to navigate the challenges of a research career.

Enhancing Mentorship for Research Learners

Research learners navigate an individualized path, making mentorship the cornerstone of successful training.^25-30 Although all learners need mentorship to enhance productivity or secure recommendation letters, research learners rely on mentors for much more, including visa sponsorship, financial support, research directions, professional development, and guidance in securing postdoctoral and faculty positions.^31-33 Because mentorship is central to research training, its quality directly affects a trainee’s productivity, career trajectory, and overall experience.

However, mentorship quality varies widely due to limited oversight and accountability.³⁰ Effective mentorship embraces accessibility, clear expectations, constructive feedback, sponsorship, and commitment to trainee development. Ineffective mentorship—whether due to neglect, misaligned expectations, poor communication, or lack of advocacy—can hinder progress, funding, and career transitions. Reliance on a single mentor amplifies these risks, leading to prolonged training, lower research output, career stagnation, and attrition.^28,34

Institutional barriers further compound these challenges. Although clinical training includes structured evaluations, competency assessments, and multiple supervisors, research training mentorship is often informal, with little standardization in training or evaluation. Few institutions have consistent policies on mentorship expectations, training, or accountability, allowing disparities to persist.

Mentorship challenges are heightened for trainees from marginalized backgrounds^35-38 due to systemic barriers, including limited access to well-connected mentors, structural inequities,^39,40 institutional bias,^38,41 and microaggressions.^42-44 These factors impact research productivity, career advancement, and retention in biomedical science.⁴⁵ Without intentional improvements at individual and institutional levels, disparities in research training will drive attrition and hinder workforce diversity.

Institutions must implement comprehensive strategies to improve mentorship effectiveness, including structured mentor training and systemic support. Evidence-based programs, such as those from the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research, enhance communication, set expectations, and promote best practices.^46,47 Culturally aware mentoring further helps mentors understand how identity, generational differences, and lived experiences shape mentorship dynamics.^48,49 These trainings should be reinforced through annual reviews and assessments, allowing research learners to provide feedback and ensuring continuous improvement.

Beyond individual mentorship, the traditional one-on-one model should be reevaluated to research learners’ evolving needs. Mentoring committees or team-based mentorship structures provide interdisciplinary perspectives, grant-writing guidance, career development support, and access to broader professional networks, fostering a more supportive and resilient training environment.⁵⁰

Institutions should actively incentivize and recognize strong mentorship.^51-53 Faculty evaluations, tenure and promotion decisions, annual reviews, and mentorship awards should incorporate structured assessments of mentoring effectiveness beyond selective letters of support.^54-58 The NIH underscores the importance of structured mentorship through mandated mentorship plans for many training grants, setting a precedent for institutional accountability.^59,60 Given the challenges of ensuring anonymity and safety in mentee feedback, institutions should develop systematic approaches to evaluating mentoring quality to ensure it is meaningfully recognized and rewarded. By integrating mentorship training, structured feedback mechanisms, mentorship networks, and faculty incentives, institutions can foster a culture where mentorship is prioritized and reinforced, ultimately ensuring that research learners receive the guidance they deserve to thrive in biomedical research.⁶¹

Creating a Safe and Inclusive Research Environment

A supportive and inclusive research training environment is essential for research learners’ well-being, professional development, and retention. Although medical schools have made strides in addressing mistreatment among clinical learners,^62-65 research learners experience unique challenges in laboratory settings that often lack clear oversight.⁶⁶ A laboratory’s culture—shaped by mentorship dynamics, implicit biases, work expectations, and power imbalances—can significantly impact trainees’ success, mental health, and career progression.⁶⁷

Research learners often work in small, hierarchical laboratory environments, relying heavily on a single mentor for funding, guidance, and career advancement. This structure can create significant power imbalances that discourage trainees from reporting mistreatment or advocating for themselves out of fear of retaliation, loss of authorship, or harm to their career prospects.⁶⁸ Learners may also experience isolation, especially if their mentor lacks strong mentorship skills or the laboratory culture prioritizes competition over collaboration.

Beyond overt mistreatment, subtle but pervasive laboratory cultural norms can undermine inclusivity and psychological safety. Unspoken expectations of overwork, including pressure to work nights and weekends without clear boundaries, can lead to burnout and disproportionately disadvantage trainees with caregiving responsibilities or those navigating systemic barriers in academia.⁶⁹ Unlike medical residency programs, which implemented structured work-hour limits after the Bell Commission’s recommendations to mitigate fatigue and ensure oversight,^70,71 PhD training often lacks clear regulations on workload expectations. This absence of defined boundaries can prolong stress and uncertainty, making it essential for institutions to establish and enforce sustainable work expectations that support research trainees’ well-being.

A lack of standardized expectations for laboratory duties, authorship, and mentoring relationships can create confusion and disparities in research environments. Without formal structures outlining roles and responsibilities and clear avenues for conflict resolution, research learners may struggle to advocate for fair treatment, equitable access to opportunities, and a work culture that supports their growth. This reality is evidenced by increased unionization efforts among research learners, who collectively express dissatisfaction with the currently acceptable standards for training environments.

Creating a safe and inclusive research environment requires clear policies, structured accountability, and cultural shifts that actively promote equity and psychological safety. Institutions must go beyond addressing mistreatment to proactively foster inclusivity by standardizing expectations, strengthening reporting mechanisms, and ensuring that mentorship structures support all research learners equitably. A critical step is implementing transparent frameworks for conflict resolution, authorship policies, and workload distribution through structured mechanisms, such as laboratory handbooks and mentor-mentee compacts.⁷² These documents provide clear expectations for roles, responsibilities, and professional conduct, reducing ambiguity and ensuring all trainees have equitable access to research opportunities. Institutions should require an annual review of these expectations to ensure continued alignment with best practices.

These efforts align with the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Group on Research, Education, and Training Appropriate Treatment of Research Trainees Working Group recommendations,⁵⁵ emphasizing leadership, professionalism, and equity as essential principles in graduate and postdoctoral training. By implementing these structured interventions—clear policies, multiple mentorship touchpoints, accessible reporting systems, and institutional oversight—medical schools can create research environments that support career growth, prioritize trainee well-being, and cultivate an inclusive, sustainable biomedical workforce.

Medical School Leadership in Supporting Research Learners

Research learners face a distinct set of challenges that demand targeted interventions from medical school leadership to sustain a robust biomedical workforce. At a time when research careers are becoming increasingly uncertain due to funding constraints, shifting research priorities, and workforce instability, medical schools must take a proactive role in stabilizing and strengthening research training programs. By addressing the issues plaguing many research environments (Table 2), institutions can better equip research learners to succeed.^64,65,73 Stakeholders, including leadership, faculty mentors, learners, and institutional support staff, must collaboratively build an environment that explicitly supports research learners. This environment requires accessible mental health resources, clear accountability for mentorship quality, and well-defined standards for overseeing and evaluating the research environment.

Table 2.

Challenges and Opportunities for Support of Research Learners

Challenges	Opportunities for support
Addressing mental health in research training
High prevalence of anxiety and depression	Provide robust mental health resources tailored to research learners
Stress from generating data, publishing, and uncertain outcomes	Implement resilience training programs and structured stress management initiatives
Feelings of inadequacy and imposter syndrome, especially among marginalized groups	Foster open dialogue about well-being and reduce stigma through institutional programs
Fear of retaliation prevents reporting hostile laboratory environments	Establish confidential and accessible reporting mechanisms for mental health concerns and laboratory mistreatment
Lack of institutional oversight leading to inconsistent access to mental health support, particularly for postdocs	Institutions must integrate mental health education into research training and provide equal access to well-being resources for all research learners
Unspoken expectations of overwork, including nights, weekends, and blurred boundaries, combined with the lack of structured work-hour limits in PhD training contribute to burnout	Establish clear and enforceable workload expectations and implement structured work-hour guidelines, drawing from models in medical training (e.g., the Bell Commission), to promote well-being and sustainable research productivity
Difficulty with work-life balance for trainees with caregiving responsibilities	Encourage faculty to support work-life balance and set realistic expectations for research progress
Enhancing mentorship for research learners
Mentorship for visa sponsorship, strong letters of recommendation, and access to competitive positions needed for career trajectories	Implement consistent mentor training programs, emphasizing cultural awareness and inclusive practices
Inconsistent mentorship quality due to lack of accountability and training creating disparities in outcomes and growth	Establish accountability mechanisms for mentorship quality, including structured evaluations and trainee feedback
Additional barriers, including biases, microaggressions, and limited culturally aware guidance, faced by underrepresented learners	Support mentors in addressing systemic barriers and biases through institutional training and oversight
Declining interest in academic careers due to unstable funding and lack of clear career pathways	Provide clear career development resources, including exposure to nonacademic career paths
Prolonged and mentor-dependent PhD training, creating career instability	Offer institutional funding to reduce reliance on individual principal investigators for financial stability
Lack of institutional benefits and financial security in postdoc positions	Strengthen grant-writing and career-planning programs to equip research learners for diverse career options
Creating a safe and inclusive research environment
Unique challenges in reporting mistreatment due to smaller, isolated laboratory settings	Develop clear, structured reporting frameworks with zero tolerance for retaliation
Heightened fear of retaliation created by mentor-mentee relationships	Establish multimentor structures to reduce single-mentor dependency and provide additional support channels
Lack of anonymity and peer support exacerbating vulnerability	Increase access to resources that promote mutual respect, psychological safety, and institutional accountability
Mistreatment affecting mental health, career progression, and overall research productivity	Build an institutional culture that values and safeguards all research learners by implementing structured oversight and inclusive policies
Increasing dissatisfaction among research learners, leading to unionization efforts	Engage in collaborative discussions with research learner representatives to address systemic concerns
Lack of structured expectations for authorship, mentorship, and funding, creating systemic inequities	Ensure transparent policies on authorship, workload, and funding allocation to promote fairness
Limited formal mechanisms for research learners to advocate for systemic changes	Develop research learner advocacy groups within institutions to provide a structured feedback loop for institutional improvements

Institutional commitment must extend beyond ad hoc initiatives to a structured framework comparable to those guiding undergraduate medical education and graduate medical education. Such a framework should establish clear mentor expectations, routine progress assessments, and mechanisms to address mistreatment and burnout. By embedding these principles into the institutional culture, medical schools can ensure that research learners receive the guidance, protection, and resources they need to thrive. The current landscape underscores the urgency of these efforts. Ultimately, by prioritizing the unique needs of research learners, medical schools can advance biomedical discovery, foster innovation, and secure the future of scientific research. The time to act is now!