Competencies: A new currency for continuing professional development

Abstract

“No research without trained researchers” has become the mantra of the EU-funded Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) education and training projects. However, it is often hard to determine the type of training required at different stages of a scientist’s career. The situation is further complicated by the constantly changing environment, e.g. the growth of disruptive technologies, societal expectations of biomedical sciences, the greater need for multi-disciplinary collaborations, and conservative or changing regulatory requirements. This article summarises the experience from a series of five EMTRAIN Public Private Partnership PhD workshops that included both scientific and transferrable skill training. This is followed by an example of a recently developed training programme, including a competency profile, for translational research and medicines development; the C-COMEND teaching programme. The emphasis is on competencies as a new currency for continuing professional development. Finally, this paper describes what we consider to be the next steps required by the scientific community to address solutions to the current training challenges so that society can benefit from the innovations that only science can provide.