Publishing in med school

[meepA]

I heard that if you want to go to a highly competitive surgical subspecialty, you should try to publish clinical research in that field.

But does publishing basic science papers give significant benefit as well (eg first author Nature)? Or do those residency programs not care?

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[Frazier]

I heard that if you want to go to a highly competitive surgical subspecialty, you should try to publish clinical research in that field.

But does publishing basic science papers give significant benefit as well (eg first author Nature)? Or do those residency programs not care?

What is Nature? Residency program directors don't care about your ecology research. Sorry, looks like that first author in Nature is useless.

 

[meepA]

Nature is the top scientific journal. I'm wondering if residency programs care if you published a widely cited paper on basic mammalian cell biology.

 

[Frazier]

I was joking. Obviously lead author in nature is impressive.

 

[DrHitchcraft]

I heard that if you want to go to a highly competitive surgical subspecialty, you should try to publish clinical research in that field.

But does publishing basic science papers give significant benefit as well (eg first author Nature)? Or do those residency programs not care?

Basic science publications carry significant weight. People on SDN seem to casually mention scientific journals like Nature, Cell, NEJM, etc. on the topic of publishing. However, it should not be taken so lightly. Publications in these journals as an MD student are extremely rare. I would guess that a single 1st author publication in Nature as an MD student would be way more than enough to impress as far as ECs goes.

There is a lot of risk in pursuing a basic science project in the hopes of publishing any highly-regarded journal though...

 

[Microglia]

Basic science publications carry significant weight. People on SDN seem to casually mention scientific journals like Nature, Cell, NEJM, etc. on the topic of publishing. However, it should not be taken so lightly. Publications in these journals as an MD student are extremely rare. I would guess that a single 1st author publication in Nature as an MD student would be way more than enough to impress as far as ECs goes.

There is a lot of risk in pursuing a basic science project in the hopes of publishing any highly-regarded journal though...

Wisdom in this post. I would add that very few MD/PhD students who take 4+ years off from med school to do basic science research land a first author in Nature/Science/Cell, etc. it's much more common to publish in a good journal that's more specific to your field.

Anyway, back on topic basic science pubs always help as long as you can find a way to tie it to the narrative you're selling the residency directors.