How is medical education research viewed by residency program directors?

[Bananako]

How is medical education research viewed by residency program directors for competitive specialties, compared to regular scientific / clinical research in the field of that specialty? Is it more beneficial to have an additional publication on regular research than to have a publication on medical education research?

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[operaman]

Overall what matters is that you get published. If you’re doing good work that’s landing in reputable journals then you’re fine. The key thing people want to see is that you know how to move a project from A to Z.

That said, you might have a hard time convincing a a basic science heavy program with an embedded research fellowship that you’re really interested in being part of their labs and doing that kind of work. That only matters if you actually want to do that kind of work. If you do, then you might be better off finding similar projects and developing those specific skills.

Plenty of academic physicians make while careers publishing on education or ethics or social determinants of health and the like.

 

[mvenus929]

No research is bad research. Medical education research is not as well respected as scientific research, but it's still important and most PDs will be involved in some sort of educational efforts, so this can be a good thing. The key is to apply to programs that match your interests. As operaman stated, if you apply to programs where trainees do only basic science research, your MedEd research just isn't going to fit the bill. But if you apply to a program where several of the faculty are actual clinician educators (not just doing teaching, but actual curriculum development, assessment, research, etc, then your research will be more favorably viewed.

If you're doing research just to do something, then at least pretend to have a passion about it on the interview trail and then focus on whatever you want to do.

 

[GoSpursGo]

Agree all pubs are helpful. If you’re going for something competitive you’ll still need pubs in your field though

 

[seeinghowitgoes]

Overall what matters is that you get published. If you’re doing good work that’s landing in reputable journals then you’re fine. The key thing people want to see is that you know how to move a project from A to Z.

That said, you might have a hard time convincing a a basic science heavy program with an embedded research fellowship that you’re really interested in being part of their labs and doing that kind of work. That only matters if you actually want to do that kind of work. If you do, then you might be better off finding similar projects and developing those specific skills.

Plenty of academic physicians make while careers publishing on education or ethics or social determinants of health and the like.

Agree with this^

Will just add that it also depends on the narrative you spin. If you try to use meded research as the reason you’re gonna be an 80\20 resesearcher-practicing doc then it won’t play well because nobody is getting NIH grants to cover their salary for meded research (the few folks in meded have their salary covered mostly by their admin work - even foundation grants are small and wouldn’t cover a salary).

If you use it to talk about how you’re interested in teaching and meded (one of the pillars of academic medicine) it will play better.

 

[PathNeuroIMorFM]

That said, you might have a hard time convincing a a basic science heavy program with an embedded research fellowship that you’re really interested in being part of their labs and doing that kind of work.

Piggybacking of this, what about Quality and Safety research?

I feel like that could apply to everything or apply to nothing. lol

 

[collegestud2013]

How is medical education research viewed by residency program directors for competitive specialties, compared to regular scientific / clinical research in the field of that specialty? Is it more beneficial to have an additional publication on regular research than to have a publication on medical education research?

Helps a little, but probably shouldn't be your focus. For the competitive specialties, you need specialty-specific research, be it clinical or basic science. And need to have a pub or at least poster/abstract by the time your apply.

 

[operaman]

Piggybacking of this, what about Quality and Safety research?

I feel like that could apply to everything or apply to nothing. lol

I think that would be fine too, especially if it’s an area you’re passionate about and in which you have done solid work.

I think a key thing for any competitive field though is that the PI/mentor is someone in that field. This means that the research is likely tailored to that field in particular and you’re also building a relationship with someone who will write you a glowing letter when the time comes.

 

[ChordaEpiphany]

No research is bad research. Medical education research is not as well respected as scientific research, but it's still important and most PDs will be involved in some sort of educational efforts, so this can be a good thing. The key is to apply to programs that match your interests. As operaman stated, if you apply to programs where trainees do only basic science research, your MedEd research just isn't going to fit the bill. But if you apply to a program where several of the faculty are actual clinician educators (not just doing teaching, but actual curriculum development, assessment, research, etc, then your research will be more favorably viewed.

If you're doing research just to do something, then at least pretend to have a passion about it on the interview trail and then focus on whatever you want to do.

No there is definitely bad research. I don't love jumping on my MD/PhD high horse, but what some of you call research is honestly terrifying and/or sad. I mostly feel bad for the attendings who supervise this as a lot of it feels like grunt work done for no reason other than to create a deliverable for a resident/fellow while some med student desperately hangs on.

Do what you have to do. As others have said, pubs are still pubs. However, as an attending I absolutely plan on pushing back on the mountains of garbage that flood ERAS every year. It's really painful seeing people with 20+ absolute garbage pubs when you know they could have written 1 or 2 thoughtful, thorough, and helpful papers with the same effort.

 

[mvenus929]

No there is definitely bad research. I don't love jumping on my MD/PhD high horse, but what some of you call research is honestly terrifying and/or sad. I mostly feel bad for the attendings who supervise this as a lot of it feels like grunt work done for no reason other than to create a deliverable for a resident/fellow while some med student desperately hangs on.

Do what you have to do. As others have said, pubs are still pubs. However, as an attending I absolutely plan on pushing back on the mountains of garbage that flood ERAS every year. It's really painful seeing people with 20+ absolute garbage pubs when you know they could have written 1 or 2 thoughtful, thorough, and helpful papers with the same effort.

Ok, let me rephrase: no research experience looks bad for applications.

Yes, there is poor quality research. And yes, it would be great if we generally improved the quality of that research. It would also be great if there wasn't such a focus on deliverables in general for promotion, bonuses, etc, because it incentivizes the wrong thing. But that's outside this discussion.

 

[Hzreio]

No there is definitely bad research. I don't love jumping on my MD/PhD high horse, but what some of you call research is honestly terrifying and/or sad. I mostly feel bad for the attendings who supervise this as a lot of it feels like grunt work done for no reason other than to create a deliverable for a resident/fellow while some med student desperately hangs on.

Do what you have to do. As others have said, pubs are still pubs. However, as an attending I absolutely plan on pushing back on the mountains of garbage that flood ERAS every year. It's really painful seeing people with 20+ absolute garbage pubs when you know they could have written 1 or 2 thoughtful, thorough, and helpful papers with the same effort.

Blame the system man… not the student

 

[h23]

Helps a little, but probably shouldn't be your focus. For the competitive specialties, you need specialty-specific research, be it clinical or basic science. And need to have a pub or at least poster/abstract by the time your apply.

Question actually, would doing basic science research hurt someone's chances if their goal is to go into a somewhat moderately competitive field? Trying to see if I should prioritize clinical research over basic science, but if I can get multiple basic science publications compared to clinical research, would that be better in the long run?

 

[collegestud2013]

Question actually, would doing basic science research hurt someone's chances if their goal is to go into a somewhat moderately competitive field? Trying to see if I should prioritize clinical research over basic science, but if I can get multiple basic science publications compared to clinical research, would that be better in the long run?

If you can get published in a decent journal and it's related to your specialty of interest then doing basic science research can help more than doing "low level" clinical research projects (eg case reports/series and retrospective chart review studies). Though in reality, getting published in basic science research is much more difficult and it's much more time consuming, and at most medical schools the students probably won't have that much time for basic science research unless they take at least a gap year for research.

 

[SurfingDoctor]

Do what you have to do. As others have said, pubs are still pubs. However, as an attending I absolutely plan on pushing back on the mountains of garbage that flood ERAS every year. It's really painful seeing people with 20+ absolute garbage pubs when you know they could have written 1 or 2 thoughtful, thorough, and helpful papers with the same effort.

This is actually pretty easy to filter out with pointed interview questions. The problem with the approach is that many people in academia (ie, the other attendings) do the same thing, so to them, its totally fine. As I mentioned in another thread, promotion in academics is a quantity game, not a quality game.

I mean, I often sit in rank list meetings and raise my concerns about applicants if its warranted based on their answers to my interview questions and often am rebutted with "Yeah, okay, but they seem nice and they published something". I then keep my mouth shut and sometimes watch my concerns become reality when they are ranked high and go:

I guess my point is, you can push back... but you'll be pushing back against a brick wall and have to decide if the juice with worth the squeeze.

 

[GoSpursGo]

Question actually, would doing basic science research hurt someone's chances if their goal is to go into a somewhat moderately competitive field? Trying to see if I should prioritize clinical research over basic science, but if I can get multiple basic science publications compared to clinical research, would that be better in the long run?

As mentioned above, getting basic science pubs look great. The problem is that it generally isn't realistic to get authorship on a basic science project as a med student unless you're doing a research year. There is a high degree of likelihood that you could waste a lot of time on something that never becomes publishable.

Clinical research is much easier to stack multiple pubs. You're not doing ground-breaking, prospective things, but you can usually get through a bunch of chart reviews and things like that with some effort.

This is actually pretty easy to filter out with pointed interview questions. The problem with the approach is that many people in academia (ie, the other attendings) do the same thing, so to them, its totally fine. As I mentioned in another thread, promotion in academics is a quantity game, not a quality game.

I mean, I often sit in rank list meetings and raise my concerns about applicants if its warranted based on their answers to my interview questions and often am rebutted with "Yeah, okay, but they seem nice and they published something". I then keep my mouth shut and sometimes watch my concerns become reality when they are ranked high and go:

I guess my point is, you can push back... but you'll be pushing back against a brick wall and have to decide if the juice with worth the squeeze.

I mean, it's peds man--what do you expect?

I will actually push back slightly as I did in the other thread. People can't solely publish crap and get promoted, because they're not going to get the grant funding that needs to go hand in hand with publications for promotion. And on the med student level, given that we're in a less competitive field, if someone has published *something* that is meaningful to me. Even if it isn't exactly groundbreaking stuff, simply seeing that they had the perseverance to see a project through to completion and could write a coherent paper shows me that they have the potential to contribute academically. Obviously not all applicants will wind up going into academia, but it's nice to know somebody has that potential.

I guess if scores and academics are similar, what criteria would you consider more important than "they seem nice and they published something?"

 

[SurfingDoctor]

As mentioned above, getting basic science pubs look great. The problem is that it generally isn't realistic to get authorship on a basic science project as a med student unless you're doing a research year. There is a high degree of likelihood that you could waste a lot of time on something that never becomes publishable.

Clinical research is much easier to stack multiple pubs. You're not doing ground-breaking, prospective things, but you can usually get through a bunch of chart reviews and things like that with some effort.

I mean, it's peds man--what do you expect?

I will actually push back slightly as I did in the other thread. People can't solely publish crap and get promoted, because they're not going to get the grant funding that needs to go hand in hand with publications for promotion. And on the med student level, given that we're in a less competitive field, if someone has published *something* that is meaningful to me. Even if it isn't exactly groundbreaking stuff, simply seeing that they had the perseverance to see a project through to completion and could write a coherent paper shows me that they have the potential to contribute academically. Obviously not all applicants will wind up going into academia, but it's nice to know somebody has that potential.

I guess if scores and academics are similar, what criteria would you consider more important than "they seem nice and they published something?"

Ha... ain't that the truth. My expectations are low.

And grant funding is important, but honestly, no one gives AF about that anymore. At least my my field, the number of grant funded physicians is probably around 30 nationwide. That's 1-2 per academic institution. But most academic institutions, in my field, have about 10 to 20 physicians per division. And those other 90% aren't all sitting at the instructor/assistant professor level because they didn't get grants. They have a connection, who pulls them into a committee (usually led by a senior member who is friend of the persons connection) and they publish retrospective consortium and policy statements. I'm not saying that people shouldn't play the game, it is what it is, because in the end, that's literally the only way most of the professors in medical academia get promoted. And because the promotion committees know this, they count the numbers and give the stamp of approval. For the most part, promotion is an olive branch so that people stay in academia to generate RVUs for the hospital-system, which is the real money maker... not grants.

As for the last question, it's mostly about being goal-oriented. I know very well, many applicants won't go into academics (the smart ones probably don't). But every applicant should have a goal past training and they should be able to articulate it clearly. It is shocking to me the number than don't. Even if one doesn't want to be an academic to the stars, they must have some goals to achieve down the road. But often, when you ask that to applicants, they come back with "I want to do education" or worse "I haven't really thought about that". My experience with people who give answers like that have not been favorable and they generally are setting themselves up to be the perpetual scut monkey.