Research as a DO student

[Derivations]

I'm sure there have been multiple threads on this, and I have read some of them, but I just wanted to throw this out here for discussion again.

I am a first year DO student and would like to do some research over the summer between M1-M2 since I intend to match into a mildly competitive specialty (thinking anesthesia right now). Unfortunately compared to MD schools, which are basically designed to give all of their students ample research opportunities, we are not afforded the same luxuries.

I went to administration at our school to ask if they could point me in the direction of any research opportunities and was quickly told that they do not have that information and that I should speak to the basic science professors. It is pretty frustrating to know that my school (and probably many DO schools) does essentially nothing to help its students find research. Anyway, after reading a lot of SDN about this topic, it seems that basic science research will often result in no publications to show for your hard work and thus will not be looked at as favorably by residencies. While I am not completely opposed to basic science research, I would like to do something a little more relevant to my future career.

So I ask you, what are good ways to find CLINICAL research that will result in something to show for my work at the end of the summer? Just cold e-mailing nearby physicians? There must be a better way, but I just don't know the best way to proceed from here.

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[AlteredScale]

I'm sure there have been multiple threads on this, and I have read some of them, but I just wanted to throw this out here for discussion again.

I am a first year DO student and would like to do some research over the summer between M1-M2 since I intend to match into a mildly competitive specialty (thinking anesthesia right now). Unfortunately compared to MD schools, which are basically designed to give all of their students ample research opportunities, we are not afforded the same luxuries.

I went to administration at our school to ask if they could point me in the direction of any research opportunities and was quickly told that they do not have that information and that I should speak to the basic science professors. It is pretty frustrating to know that my school (and probably many DO schools) does essentially nothing to help its students find research. Anyway, after reading a lot of SDN about this topic, it seems that basic science research will often result in no publications to show for your hard work and thus will not be looked at as favorably by residencies. While I am not completely opposed to basic science research, I would like to do something a little more relevant to my future career.

So I ask you, what are good ways to find CLINICAL research that will result in something to show for my work at the end of the summer? Just cold e-mailing nearby physicians? There must be a better way, but I just don't know the best way to proceed from here.

Though I am an MS-0 technically, I am already on board a clinical research project and have gotten good tips from current OMS-3's and 4's in terms of finding clinical research.

This is what I've been doing. Find the nearby hospitals that conduct research. Search the specific division or department with the word "research" at the end or "scholarly activity". You should be given a list of faculty that are currently doing research there. Search them on pubmed and see what kind of work they are doing (clinical or basic science). And contact accordingly.

If that doesn't work, go to the "contact us" area of the specialty and call the number. They can help direct your from there. Hope that helps some.

 

[Derivations]

Though I am an MS-0 technically, I am already on board a clinical research project and have gotten good tips from current OMS-3's and 4's in terms of finding clinical research.

This is what I've been doing. Find the nearby hospitals that conduct research. Search the specific division or department with the word "research" at the end or "scholarly activity". You should be given a list of faculty that are currently doing research there. Search them on pubmed and see what kind of work they are doing (clinical or basic science). And contact accordingly.

If that doesn't work, go to the "contact us" area of the specialty and call the number. They can help direct your from there. Hope that helps some.

Thanks I'll give that a try.

 

[group_theory]

I'm sure there have been multiple threads on this, and I have read some of them, but I just wanted to throw this out here for discussion again.

I am a first year DO student and would like to do some research over the summer between M1-M2 since I intend to match into a mildly competitive specialty (thinking anesthesia right now). Unfortunately compared to MD schools, which are basically designed to give all of their students ample research opportunities, we are not afforded the same luxuries.

I went to administration at our school to ask if they could point me in the direction of any research opportunities and was quickly told that they do not have that information and that I should speak to the basic science professors. It is pretty frustrating to know that my school (and probably many DO schools) does essentially nothing to help its students find research. Anyway, after reading a lot of SDN about this topic, it seems that basic science research will often result in no publications to show for your hard work and thus will not be looked at as favorably by residencies. While I am not completely opposed to basic science research, I would like to do something a little more relevant to my future career.

So I ask you, what are good ways to find CLINICAL research that will result in something to show for my work at the end of the summer? Just cold e-mailing nearby physicians? There must be a better way, but I just don't know the best way to proceed from here.

It's too bad your school administration isn't more proactive in providing students with research opportunities.

Not sure how much clinical research you can do in the few months between MS1 and MS2 that can result in publication unless you join a research project already in progress. Might be difficult to join one that is just starting (by the time you get IRB approval for your project, your summer will be gone and you might be too busy studying for your boards) but joining one from the start (and if you do the heavy lifting) might result in a first author publication. Joining a project may result in having your name among the authors (depending on how significant your contribution)

There are a lot of research, from multicenter trials, to retrospective chart reviews, to prospective single-center trials, to QA/QI projects. I would try contacting a nearby large hospital (either academically university medical center or a hospital with a strong academic affiliation) and see if they have a research coordinator (or if it is a university medical school, usually large departments will have research coordinators and even whole academic research support staff/unit to help with research/grant support). Ask which professors are actively doing research or running multiple projects - then make contact with that professor (try contacting their secretary first, since professors gets a lot of email and unsolicited emails are easily ignored/deleted) and see if you can join any of their active projects (easier if you mention that you are doing this for experience, and not for credit or requirement or for $$$ since funding these days are tight). Emphasize your background and what you can bring to the group (even if it is just free labor or grunt work, but if you have some experience, all the better)

If there is a large university medical center nearby, see if you can find a resident/fellow who is also doing some clinical research - offer something to that resident/fellow that he/she doesn't have a lot of ... TIME and MANPOWER. Offer to do literature review/research, chart review, etc. Usually the resident will already have a faculty advisor and hopefully an IRB approved project (or an IRB exempt project or quality review/assurance project)

Expect to spend more than just a few months between MS1 and MS2 if you want a publication out of this. Poster presentations at national conferences will also impress (not as much as papers, but still good), and if you get an oral presentation at a national conference ... even better.

Good luck.

 

[AlteredScale]

It's too bad your school administration isn't more proactive in providing students with research opportunities.

Not sure how much clinical research you can do in the few months between MS1 and MS2 that can result in publication unless you join a research project already in progress. Might be difficult to join one that is just starting (by the time you get IRB approval for your project, your summer will be gone and you might be too busy studying for your boards) but joining one from the start (and if you do the heavy lifting) might result in a first author publication. Joining a project may result in having your name among the authors (depending on how significant your contribution)

There are a lot of research, from multicenter trials, to retrospective chart reviews, to prospective single-center trials, to QA/QI projects. I would try contacting a nearby large hospital (either academically university medical center or a hospital with a strong academic affiliation) and see if they have a research coordinator (or if it is a university medical school, usually large departments will have research coordinators and even whole academic research support staff/unit to help with research/grant support). Ask which professors are actively doing research or running multiple projects - then make contact with that professor (try contacting their secretary first, since professors gets a lot of email and unsolicited emails are easily ignored/deleted) and see if you can join any of their active projects (easier if you mention that you are doing this for experience, and not for credit or requirement or for $$$ since funding these days are tight). Emphasize your background and what you can bring to the group (even if it is just free labor or grunt work, but if you have some experience, all the better)

If there is a large university medical center nearby, see if you can find a resident/fellow who is also doing some clinical research - offer something to that resident/fellow that he/she doesn't have a lot of ... TIME and MANPOWER. Offer to do literature review/research, chart review, etc. Usually the resident will already have a faculty advisor and hopefully an IRB approved project (or an IRB exempt project or quality review/assurance project)

Expect to spend more than just a few months between MS1 and MS2 if you want a publication out of this. Poster presentations at national conferences will also impress (not as much as papers, but still good), and if you get an oral presentation at a national conference ... even better.

Good luck.

For the poster presentations and the oral presentations; do you need to win an a research award to partake in those? Or are they squally just submitting an abstract and work to the conference and hoping to get accepted?

Thanks for your help!

 

[ERK123]

For the poster presentations and the oral presentations; do you need to win an a research award to partake in those? Or are they squally just submitting an abstract and work to the conference and hoping to get accepted?

Thanks for your help!

From my experience (presented posters at 2 conferences) with poster presentations, any accepted abstract comes with the expectation of a poster. At the two conferences that I have been to presenters were given a block of time to be by their poster. Dozens to hundreds of posters are simultaneously presented. As far as oral presentations, I am not sure how those are awarded. I do assume it is a more intense applications process and might require higher quality research to be accepted. I could be wrong about this, however. I could also just see a lot of authors not wanting to bother with an oral presentation, and decide to just do a poster even if their research would have qualified for the former.

 

[sameharu1991]

I'm sure there have been multiple threads on this, and I have read some of them, but I just wanted to throw this out here for discussion again.

I am a first year DO student and would like to do some research over the summer between M1-M2 since I intend to match into a mildly competitive specialty (thinking anesthesia right now). Unfortunately compared to MD schools, which are basically designed to give all of their students ample research opportunities, we are not afforded the same luxuries.

I went to administration at our school to ask if they could point me in the direction of any research opportunities and was quickly told that they do not have that information and that I should speak to the basic science professors. It is pretty frustrating to know that my school (and probably many DO schools) does essentially nothing to help its students find research. Anyway, after reading a lot of SDN about this topic, it seems that basic science research will often result in no publications to show for your hard work and thus will not be looked at as favorably by residencies. While I am not completely opposed to basic science research, I would like to do something a little more relevant to my future career.

So I ask you, what are good ways to find CLINICAL research that will result in something to show for my work at the end of the summer? Just cold e-mailing nearby physicians? There must be a better way, but I just don't know the best way to proceed from here.

I worked in Clinical Research department for a university hospital during my gap years. One way is to log into clinicaltrials.gov and see the list of active/recruiting trials. If you go to advanced search and select the state/area of location and enter the keywords of research you are interested in, it should help you narrow the list down. Then, you probably have to click on individual studies to see where they are actively recruiting but after a while you get a good sense of schools/hospitals that are active in clinical research.

I will be entering DO school in the Fall... but I thought I would also use some of this time to look into clinical research opportunities as well. Good luck in your search, I hope you land on something!

 

[koan]

If you're thinking about anesthesia check out the FAER fellowship. It's too late for this year but I was able to do it after 2nd year / Step 1 by stacking my 8 weeks of 3rd year electives at the front end. They give you a stipend and a budget to attend the ASA conference. Every participant presents a poster, and a handful do oral presentations in addition. Which is great b/c as noted above it's tough to get a publication out of an 8-week research effort otherwise. It also has come up in almost every residency interview, and may be what scored me a few of them. PM if you want more info about the program.

 

[PIacebo]

This happened to me as well last month and basically sent on a wild good chase after each person referred me to someone else with better info. Really frustrating

 

[DrMaximus]

If you're thinking about anesthesia check out the FAER fellowship. It's too late for this year but I was able to do it after 2nd year / Step 1 by stacking my 8 weeks of 3rd year electives at the front end. They give you a stipend and a budget to attend the ASA conference. Every participant presents a poster, and a handful do oral presentations in addition. Which is great b/c as noted above it's tough to get a publication out of an 8-week research effort otherwise. It also has come up in almost every residency interview, and may be what scored me a few of them. PM if you want more info about the program.

FAER is an awesome program for sure and I wish that I had known about it sooner. I actually just googled medical student summer research and found a program at Vandy anesthesia that I subsequently applied to and (by some dumb luck) got into. I was also lucky to work with a really great attending who continued to collaborate with me throughout the semester (working on the stats and paper writing) and that ended up in a publication. Again, it was sort of a stars aligned situation, but it is possible.

 

[jqueb29]

If you're thinking about anesthesia check out the FAER fellowship. It's too late for this year but I was able to do it after 2nd year / Step 1 by stacking my 8 weeks of 3rd year electives at the front end. They give you a stipend and a budget to attend the ASA conference. Every participant presents a poster, and a handful do oral presentations in addition. Which is great b/c as noted above it's tough to get a publication out of an 8-week research effort otherwise. It also has come up in almost every residency interview, and may be what scored me a few of them. PM if you want more info about the program.

Thank you for this awesome post. I really want to do anesthesia and was well aware of FAER but I can't do it this summer (post-MS1 summer). I never would have even considered next summer being a possibility.

 

[moonwake]

If you're thinking about anesthesia check out the FAER fellowship. It's too late for this year but I was able to do it after 2nd year / Step 1 by stacking my 8 weeks of 3rd year electives at the front end. They give you a stipend and a budget to attend the ASA conference. Every participant presents a poster, and a handful do oral presentations in addition. Which is great b/c as noted above it's tough to get a publication out of an 8-week research effort otherwise. It also has come up in almost every residency interview, and may be what scored me a few of them. PM if you want more info about the program.

Sorry for digging up this thread but do you have any idea if they have research opportunities for gen. surg DO's or just med students in general? That FAER fellowship sounds like money.

 

[koan]

FAER is anesthesia only, but they have funding opportunities for med students (MSARF program) as well as residents. If you're trying to do general surgery research, it's probably not the most appropriate fellowship. But some of the projects offered are more surgical / perioperative than others.

 

[FutureDO2016]

Another option is the Summer Research Fellowship offered at a few osteopathic medical schools including NSU-COM, NYCOM, OUHCOM, KYCOM and more in which you apply your spring semester of second year to a research fellowship and if accepted get a stipend and present a poster usually. Many schools have this type of program and I suggest when you get accepted you ask your school if they do and if they don't, then look into other opportunities people listed above.

 

[FutureDO2016]

Another thing I've noticed that mostly every DO school offers is the OMM and Anatomy Fellowship, which you can also look into and is not research but still looks good on CV's I'm sure?

 

[moonwake]

Another thing I've noticed that mostly every DO school offers is the OMM and Anatomy Fellowship, which you can also look into and is not research but still looks good on CV's I'm sure?

Yeah they do- I'll need to really look into that (again). Hopefully something like that might be good enough.

 

[Shinobiz11]

Another thing I've noticed that mostly every DO school offers is the OMM and Anatomy Fellowship, which you can also look into and is not research but still looks good on CV's I'm sure?

I saw on UMich's PMR residency page, that all the DO residents have the OMM fellowship. It's probably not necessary, but gives you some extra credentials.

 

[Colbare]

I'm going into anesthesia and found that at about 10 out of 16 interviews I was asked about my unpublished project at a place which most people would recognize. Occasionally I was asked about my poster presentation at the Osteopathic forum in my state. I got that project by cold emailing PIs and other staff from the physiology departments website.

Anesthesiology has about 1 average publication per matriculatant so I don't believe it's crucial. If you spend considerable time doing it though try doing it somewhere with a name. Ive heard of colleagues at our school who published several times through our schools faculty and they were never asked about it at interviews. This is all ACGME interviewing btw so this could be very different applying AOA.

I didn't know about FAER but it does sound awesome and I would have taken advantage of it had I known.