Perceptions of the professional and personal impact of hybrid fellowship training: a qualitative study.

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to elucidate graduate perceptions of how fellowship training impacted their post-training professional and personal lives. METHODS: Interviews were conducted with 13 graduates of a hybrid (e.g. blended-learning) fellowship program. All participants were at least 1 year post completion of fellowship to limit recall bias and allow for post-training personal and professional development. Qualitative analysis was performed on interview transcriptions using directed content analysis with two coders other than the interviewers, followed by discussion until agreement was reached if there were disputes related to coding analysis. If needed, arbitration was provided from one of two interviewers. RESULTS: Analysis revealed three primary constructs of post-fellowship impact: practical, social, and personal. Practical subthemes were centric to care delivery. Social subthemes extended to intra, inter, and non-professional connections. Personal subthemes noted professional and cognitive evolution. DISCUSSION: Participants clearly described impact extending well beyond day-to-day practice suggesting that fellowship impacted the whole person versus sole practitioner. This study may impact program structure and content inclusion for fellowship programs as well as providing support for fellows in training.

Secondary contact during adaptive radiation: a community matrix for Lake Malawi cichlids.

We used a community of Lake Malawi rock-dwelling cichlids to study secondary contact during adaptive radiation. Using abundance data from survey plots we constructed a matrix of pair-wise interaction coefficients for males of 21 native and eight transplanted species. After controlling for the effects of habitat variation, correlations among residual male abundances suggest that coevolved species compete less than those brought into artificial secondary contact 30 years ago and that species with the same body colour compete more than those with different body colours. The latter result provides evidence that a trait related to reproductive isolation affects competitive interactions and the distribution of individuals throughout an entire community. Our results further suggest lake level fluctuations that divide and reconnect communities act to increase local (alpha), as well as total (gamma) diversity, in this adaptive radiation. The communities are not, however, unsaturated in the simplest sense; new species can enter a community, but they disproportionately reduce the abundance of original community members.