How to build a research career?

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drstatinatorva

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Which would be the best route for a non US IMG done with medical school (MBBS) to be a lab scientist; A residency followed by research fellowship or a PhD and post doc ? Particularly considering that residency IMG tend to get are community programs with little focus on research? Thanks.

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My recommendation is to focus on obtaining and completing a residency if you'd like to practice as a physician in the USA.

Having a physician-scientist lab based career as a well qualified US citizen is very difficult these days.

You can keep your eyes open to research oriented fellowships when you finish residency, but it may not be available for you.

Doing the reverse (research now -- residency later) is a worse pathway because you will become essentially ineligible for residency if you get too far from training. Even if you spend a long time in the lab, it is no guarantee of a stable research or clinical career.
 
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I agree with @Neuronix. The pathway for a physician-scientist in the US as a non-US citizen is very hard. It is not to say its impossible, but by not being a US citizen, you essentially having eliminated any government form of funding, which is a large majority of funding. You'll essentially only be able to complete for foundation and pharmaceutical grants. It's not to say you can't build a career off foundation grants, you can, but you'll have to do research in that specific area where that money is, usually heart disease, cancer, lung disease, diabetes are the big ones that come to mind.

And also as Neuronix mentioned, if you do research first, the likelihood of doing residency and actually getting income diminishes with time.

Best case, do residency, fellowship if you are interested and spend as much time on an institutional T32 as possible and get citizenship. But that is nearly 10 years down the road, hard to know if you'll want the same thing then.
 
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Thank you very much.
So, how about sacrificing clinical career by entirely focussing on research through PhD route as an Img?
And are there any other country that IMGs can look for a physician scientist career?
Thanks again.
 
Thank you very much.
So, how about sacrificing clinical career by entirely focussing on research through PhD route as an Img?
And are there any other country that IMGs can look for a physician scientist career?
Thanks again.

This turns out to be a horrible idea. I know of several examples of IMGs doing PhDs with exactly this plan, but then realizing that there's no job down the line, and then backpedaling 100% to take their USLME 5-8 years later and doing residency in their late 30s.

The average starting salary of a typical PhD grad in the US is probably somewhere between 50-70k including academic and industry jobs. Mid-career salary is about 110-150k. The typical rate of progression from postdoc stage to full time assistant professor stage ~10-15%. Current funding rate for NIH grants 10-15%. You will likely have to move multiple times in your career.

The average starting salary of a typical residency trained MD is > 200k. Mid-career salary is generally between 250-450k depending on specialty. Typical rate of progression from residency to attending > 95%. Physicians, with a few exceptions, in general are in high demand everywhere in the country.

Unless you are already wealthy (or know exactly what you are doing, like if you come from extreme poverty and have an unusually strong interest in science), I don't recommend forgoing clinical training. Even if you want to be a basic scientist, it turns out being an MD now helps you and probably improves your attrition rate through various "part-time" mechanisms (i.e. scientist part time, doctor part time, higher salary less work more safety). Due to inflation and lack of salary increase at the postdoc stage, a family of four living on postdoc salary can be often be effectively classified as in poverty and be eligible for public services (i.e. food stamps and housing subsidies) in many geographical regions in the US with good quality biomedical research.

This is of course speaking in averages. Your individual milage varies greatly. There are exceptional IMGs who do a PhD in a world-famous lab, do a postdoc in a world-famous lab, and eventually end up as a professor in basic science research. However, in SEVERAL of THOSE instances that I know of, even these individuals elect to take the USMLE during postdoc and end up in a desirable residency program. In fact, I know now a couple of full fledged IMG professors who had previous R01 funding who decide to drop out of science and do a residency over in their 40s because funding not renewed, etc.

This type of trend has gotten worse in the last 10 years, and by every indication will get worse the next few decades.
 
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Are there other options to learn and enter research after residency other than research fellowship?
 
Thanks all. My best bet would be to focus on getting residency ( which will itself be a challenge considering IMG status) and be the best clinician I can be. Then do either clinical or lab research depending on the opportunity.
 
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