Dr. Ferucci
Reasons to Participate
Elizabeth D. Ferucci, MD, MPH, research physician and rheumatologist with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, Anchorage, was one of the original cohort of reviewers. She recalls her response to the invitation to become a mentor.
“I thought back to my early reviews for journals and recalled having no specific training in peer review, despite having significant research training during my fellowship,” she says. “I understood that mentoring junior peer reviewers was an important area of need. I enjoy reviewing manuscripts for journals and have developed my own system over time, so I was happy to be able to share that with new colleagues.” She is currently in her third year with the program.
Dr. Risal
One of Dr. Ferucci’s mentees, Ujjwol Risal, MD, FICR, obtained his degree in internal medicine from B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences, Dharan, Nepal, in 2017. In 2020, he completed a two-year fellowship in Clinical Rheumatology at Patan Academy of Health Sciences, Lalitpur, Nepal, one of the first two fellows receiving formal rheumatology training in the country. He is currently working as the sole rheumatologist at the B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences.
Over the past couple of years, he says, “I’ve developed a keen interest in research and have published a few papers myself. I felt like I needed some training to sharpen my skills.”
Working with his mentor has been very helpful, he reports. “The feedback has been very supportive, which has helped me build my confidence.”
Rheumatology is now a budding field in Nepal, he notes, and the interest in research is growing. “If we have trained reviewers, these people can sift out good papers from bad ones—and they can contribute to the system as a whole,” he says.
Dr. Mathias
Kristen Mathias, MD, is a third-year postdoctoral fellow in rheumatology at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. She is on the T32 research pathway and foresees having a research career. The mentoring program, she says, “has been helpful to see the review process and then juxtapose that with my own writing of manuscripts.”
Value of the Program
Ali Yagiz Ayla, MD, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Division of Rheumatology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, was involved in reviewing case reports and small studies when he saw the ACR notice for applications. “I joined this program because I wanted to learn from somebody who does this regularly,” he says.
