applying to a clinical research program during the fall

[Angie_MD]

Hey all, so in order to kick start my volunteer and clinical experience, I applied to a ER clinical research program with NYU for the fall, about how much in both research and clinical hours is required or ideal for medical school applicants?

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[aegistitan]

In terms of research, it's not really about hours - but the quality of work you do. Do you have anything to show what you learned from the experience, such as publications (preferably first author)?

I personally look for first author work (real conference presentations, publications) in medical school and residency applications. I find that undergrads are often added as middle author to things that they contributed little to, don't deserve to be on (often nepotism factors), and they often don't understand the papers their names are on. First author usually shows that real effort went into the project on the undergrad's part. Undergrads don't really have control over their projects, so it may not be a high impact project meriting high impact journal publication. That's fine. It's so uncommon to see an undergrad (or med student, for that matter) actually follow a research project through to completion, that those types stand out in my mind.

Also I find that undergrads and med students vastly overestimate their abilities and underestimate the difficulty of getting papers published at all, let alone in high impact journals. It's much more common for them to contribute something minor to a graduate student's four years of hard work sometimes culminating in a single publication, and get second or some other middle authorship on their work. I personally nearly disregard that effort, and am rather annoyed when I hear people talking about their "publications" resulting from those minor contributions.

You should remember that as an undergraduate the point of research (in regards to medical school admissions) is to clearly demonstrate that you know what it takes to be a successful scientist. You should know how to take a project through analysis, writing, and the various steps of publication, to completion.

As far as clinical research goes, I have no first hand experience in it. But I have heard that it is somewhat easier to pump out papers than wet lab research. But at the end of the day research is research no matter if it is clinical, translational, or lab-based.

 

[hoihaie]

Hey all, so in order to kick start my volunteer and clinical experience, I applied to a ER clinical research program with NYU for the fall, about how much in both research and clinical hours is required or ideal for medical school applicants?

You do as much as you can with maximum effort. In the end it doesn't matter if you have 3000 hours vs 4000 hours, its about what you produced during that period

 

[Aerus]

Generally these clinical research positions consist of collecting data from patients and inputting it in rather than "real hypothesis driven" research that medical schools like to see. I would treat this as more of a clinical experience rather than research unless you are given an opportunity to help with the scientific thinking in this.

 

[Long Way to Go]

Generally these clinical research positions consist of collecting data from patients and inputting it in rather than "real hypothesis driven" research that medical schools like to see. I would treat this as more of a clinical experience rather than research unless you are given an opportunity to help with the scientific thinking in this.

Aerus, what experience do you have with what these positions are usually like? That has not been my experience nor those of nearly everyone else I know.

 

[NickNaylor]

The number of hours is unimportant. What is important is demonstrating that you got something from the experience. From the research side, this means being able to talk intelligently about the scientific process within the context of a research project and understanding what it means to generate a hypothesis and design experiments to test that hypothesis. For clinical work, this means being able to talk intelligently about working with patients and, ideally, what it means to be a physician.

If you have 1000 hours doing both activities but can't talk about either in a convincing way in either your application or the interview, that 1000 hours will be worth nothing to you. Make sure you're involved, paying attention to what's going on, and learning something. If you do those things, you're likely to have something worth talking about come application time.

 

[DielsAlder]

I might be wrong, but I think adcoms would consider this more as research than actual clinical experience, although it is clinical research? I only mention this because you mention you are starting your clinical experience with this.

 

[Neuronix]

In terms of research, it's not really about hours - but the quality of work you do. Do you have anything to show what you learned from the experience, such as publications (preferably first author)?

You quoted me out of a different discussion. That discussion was about number of publications, increasing your number of publications, and increasing the impact factors of your publications. I have repeatedly stated in the MD/PhD forum (http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/what-are-my-chances-read-before-asking.539268/) that it is not necessary for undergrads to publish even to matriculate at top MD/PhD programs. My point in what you quoted was to say that if you're going to get something out of your research experience, make it first author. Most of the undergrads and med students I see out there bragging about their publications are really bragging about publications that they got through nepotism (family connections to a lab) or otherwise minimal effort middle author publications that to me don't count. At the end of the day, most undergrads are not given the time, resources, and mentoring necessary to publish, and that assumes that they are willing and able to put in that level of effort.

You should remember that as an undergraduate the point of research (in regards to medical school admissions) is to clearly demonstrate that you know what it takes to be a successful scientist. You should know how to take a project through analysis, writing, and the various steps of publication, to completion.

This is a ridiculous standard for most undergrads unless they are applying for MD/PhD, and even then that is a high bar not met by the vast majority of applicants. As an undergraduate the point of research is to gain experience and exposure to help you decide whether research should become a significant part of your career. At the very least, it is best to understand that research is complicated and difficult, and that you're not going to go take a summer of med school and publish a basic science paper. If you can get more out of it than that and be productive yourself, great, that looks nice and will help you, but it sure isn't expected or required to get into medical school.

But at the end of the day research is research no matter if it is clinical, translational, or lab-based.

In what way? I would completely disagree with that statement in most respects.

I might be wrong, but I think adcoms would consider this more as research than actual clinical experience, although it is clinical research? I only mention this because you mention you are starting your clinical experience with this.

At the end of the day, who knows. It could be anything from gathering data from patients directly in person to sitting behind a desk doing endless, mindless chart reviews to pull datapoints into spreadsheets.

Hey all, so in order to kick start my volunteer and clinical experience, I applied to a ER clinical research program with NYU for the fall, about how much in both research and clinical hours is required or ideal for medical school applicants?

To answer your question directly, we have no idea what your ER clinical research program will actually entail. There is no set number of research or clinical hours that is considered "ideal". At a minimum you should aim for 50+ (I'd recommend 100+) hours of direct patient contact through shadowing or volunteering with patients. Your clinical research program should help you springboard into that sort of role, and if it doesn't you should find an additional opportunity that will help you achieve direct patient contact. As for research, there is no minimum amount of research and many applicants apply successfully without any research at all. However, if you are interested in research, if you put in significant effort you can be rewarded through strong letters, connections, and hopefully presentations and publications that will look impressive to medical schools. It does behoove you to apply to medical school as more than just a GPA and MCAT score, and research is one way to help yourself stand out, if you are truly interested and impressive in a research capacity.

 

[Aerus]

Aerus, what experience do you have with what these positions are usually like? That has not been my experience nor those of nearly everyone else I know.

I used to be a clinical research associate in the ER during my first year of undergrad. There's a reason I am using the past tense.

 

[Long Way to Go]

I used to be a clinical research associate in the ER during my first year of undergrad. There's a reason I am using the past tense.

Maybe it's because I didn't start doing clinical research until near the very end of college, but I definitely got a lot more input in regards to study design, troubleshooting, etc. You're right though that there's only so much you can do as a freshman in college. OP, maybe you want to look at community health work? It's pretty intellectually stimulating; you get to deal with real people and patients just the same as in the hospital; and you're not following a prescribed protocol to the T.