Pharmacy residents at Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea and Austin make valuable contributions to evidence-based literature through completion of a required research project. Concurrent with development of a research project under the direction of subject matter experts and a mentor, each resident is enrolled in Mayo Clinic's pharmacy research curriculum to develop foundational research skills.

This curriculum includes a combination of two all-day, application-based workshops taught by experienced pharmacist researchers plus the completion of a certificate program provided by Mayo Clinic's Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCaTS). The certificate program, funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH), is designed to address the development and implementation of national standards and best practices for translation, from basic discovery to clinical and community-engaged research. Pharmacy residents complete the CCaTS Essentials of Clinical and Translational Science (ECATS) program to obtain a certificate. The ECATS program, paid for by the residency program, is comprised of ~30 hours of online self-directed and self-paced coursework, including the following modules:

• Fundamentals of clinical and translational science
• Introduction to principles of clinical epidemiology
• Biostatistics in clinical research

The two live research workshops, offered at the beginning of the academic year, allow the pharmacy resident to learn directly from and with research experts on a variety of topics, including:

• Authorship considerations and guidelines
• Institutional review board introduction and submission considerations
• Development of a research proposal and protocol
• Research tools for timeline development and project management
• Data mining and reporting using the electronic health record
• Database development and basics of data management
• Citation management
• Introductory course on statistical software
• Abstract, poster and manuscript preparation and writing

Pharmacy residents are afforded additional research support in the form of statistical expertise and discretionary funds. A partnership between the Department of Pharmacy and the Division of Biomedical Statistics and Informatics provides a dedicated biostatistician for pharmacy resident consultation. Upfront collaboration with these experts assists in the refinement of the study question, methodology, statistical sample size calculation and justification, and plans for data analysis. Each pharmacy resident is also afforded discretionary research funds to offset electronic data pulls, abstract and manuscript publication fees, equipment, and other research-associated costs.

During the academic year, residents will have time devoted specifically to research projects. Residents are encouraged to publish their research results in a peer-reviewed journal. Residents are required to present the results of their research project at a regional residency conference.