research required for competitive specialties?

[Syndicate]

Is research required or strongly recommended for matching into competitive specialities? And does it have to be research in the specific specialty in order for it to "help"? I know it's early and I have no idea what I want to do in the future but one thing that I don't like to do is research (my biggest weakness in my med school app). However, if competitive specialties strongly suggest research, then I can put my head down and do what's necessary when school starts.

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[Laurenxxxx]

Are you an undergraduate? I'm one to believe that if you don't love research, don't do it. You shouldn't do it just to look good for medical school. I think it's obvious to admissions committees which students enjoyed research and which students did it for a line on a resume. But if you don't do research, make sure you fill that void with something else. Like extensive volunteer/EC/clinical etc. Medical school is medical school, you don't choose a specialty going in, so it doesn't matter right away.

Most medical schools don't require research. Unless you want to get accepted into a top, research heavy school (which you probably don't considering you hate research) you should be fine, granted the rest of your application is sharp.

 

[Lya]

This has been discussed numerous times.

As a pre-med, you shouldn't worry about it yet, but if I have to answer: Yes, for competitive specialties, the research is in general, by and large, required even though some people might say it is strongly encouraged. Research in that particular specialty is ideal, but at the end of the day, some research in another field is certainly better than nothing at all.


Can you share why you don't like to do research? There are many types of research, from clinical to bench to bioinformatics, so I am sure you might find something interesting at least.

 

[Mt Kilimanjaro]

This Charting Outcomes is a few years old, but I think it's the most recent one that breaks the data down this way. There's graphs for research projects that will give you an idea of what to expect.

 

[Microglia]

Long story short: yes, research is essentially required for top residencies. No, it doesn't have to be in that field to help. Yes, it helps a fair but more if it is in that field.

 

[Espadaleader]

Research is also pretty much universally required for fellowship too. Listen, unless you plan to do general family med, peds, or gen surg you will need to do research

 

[Syndicate]

This is what I was afraid of. I don't like research because I just don't feel interested in it. I've also never did research before. I'm currently accepted to medical school already and I was planning to just score really well on the boards and get good clinical grades to get a competitive specialty

 

[QuantumJ]

Yes it's pretty much required for some specialties. I believe Rad Onc in one of the past years only had 1 student match who didn't have research. That said it doesn't have to be bench research as many choose to do clinical instead. The strongest research will be in the field you are applying to but of course if you have research in a different field it's still better than none at all. Higher grades and Step can let you get away with less research to be competitive (just as a lower step and grades can be bolstered by lots of research).

 

[Syndicate]

Yes it's pretty much required for some specialties. I believe Rad Onc in one of the past years only had 1 student match who didn't have research. That said it doesn't have to be bench research as many choose to do clinical instead. The strongest research will be in the field you are applying to but of course if you have research in a different field it's still better than none at all. Higher grades and Step can let you get away with less research to be competitive (just as a lower step and grades can be bolstered by lots of research).

Do you know if diagnostic radiology requires it? And also, do you know if IM at top programs like MGH requires it?

 

[QuantumJ]

It would help in Radiology. If you wanted to train at a big name academic place it would basically be required. If you had the Step 1 and grades and wanted a smaller community program you might be able to get away without any research. I would recommend looking through the Radiology subforums as I bet you could find a lot of students who ask about research. Top IM programs are the same (big name=research required, smaller programs not so much).

 

[Syndicate]

It would help in Radiology. If you wanted to train at a big name academic place it would basically be required. If you had the Step 1 and grades and wanted a smaller community program you might be able to get away without any research. I would recommend looking through the Radiology subforums as I bet you could find a lot of students who ask about research. Top IM programs are the same (big name=research required, smaller programs not so much).

Thank you very much for your informative responses. Do you know how extensive the research should be? Like, do I need publications or is 1 summer's worth of research between M1 and M2 enough?

 

[mcloaf]

Do you know if diagnostic radiology requires it? And also, do you know if IM at top programs like MGH requires it?

Why are you interested in big academic centers if you don't like research?

 

[sobored]

Do you know if diagnostic radiology requires it? And also, do you know if IM at top programs like MGH requires it?

What is your interest in attending an academic program whose main goal is to train academic physicians who will go on to be leaders in their respective fields? Most people who apply and match at a place like MGH have done research, probably like it to some extent and probably will continue their work beyond residency. There are many excellent training programs that won't be so fixated on the research experiences of an applicant, so why focus on a place like MGH?

Also, when you find a field of medicine that truly speaks to you, I imagine it's probably more palatable to do the research that will move that field forward (at least that has been my experience).

 

[sobored]

Why are you interested in big academic centers if you don't like research?

Beat me to it

 

[QuantumJ]

Thank you very much for your informative responses. Do you know how extensive the research should be? Like, do I need publications or is 1 summer's worth of research between M1 and M2 enough?

Now that I'm not sure about. I believe that an abstract, poster, retrospective study can fall under the umbrella of research that will help you match. The purpose is to show your interest in the field and demonstrate you can add something so any bit helps. Also keep in mind if you want a fellowship after IM you'll need research for that as well.

 

[Syndicate]

What is your interest in attending an academic program whose main goal is to train academic physicians who will go on to be leaders in their respective fields? Most people who apply and match at a place like MGH have done research, probably like it to some extent and probably will continue their work beyond residency. There are many excellent training programs that won't be so fixated on the research experiences of an applicant, so why focus on a place like MGH?

Also, when you find a field of medicine that truly speaks to you, I imagine it's probably more palatable to do the research that will move that field forward (at least that has been my experience).

I was under the impression that a lot of private group specialty practices only allow graduates of prestigious residency/fellowship programs into their private practice. Is this incorrect?

 

[meepA]

Also related to that question for anyone who has insight on this question... Would publishing a high impact (nature cell science) paper in an unrelated field help your application more than publishing say a clinical paper/ case report in the field but at a mid tier journal?

 

[sourdoughllama]

Research is also pretty much universally required for fellowship too. Listen, unless you plan to do general family med, peds, or gen surg you will need to do research

Really? Even the less desirable fellowships? Also regarding your second point...wouldn't specialties like EM or psychiatry or OB not necessarily need research? I'd believe your claims if you specified you meant top residencies though

 

[Espadaleader]

Yes. I cannot be 100% certain but you should be prepared to do research. You don't have to "like" research but if you want to subspecialize then its basically required for that step of training. Most fellowship curriculums have research built into the program. There is no way around it.

http://www.acmt.net/resources_training.html

 

[sourdoughllama]

Yes. I cannot be 100% certain but you should be prepared to do research. You don't have to "like" research but if you want to subspecialize then its basically required for that step of training. Most fellowship curriculums have research built into the program. There is no way around it.

http://www.acmt.net/resources_training.html

Oh you meant during fellowship ok that makes more sense

 

[Law2Doc]

I was under the impression that a lot of private group specialty practices only allow graduates of prestigious residency/fellowship programs into their private practice. Is this incorrect?

Very often private practices go with the top grads of programs that they actually work with in the community. So not necessarily the big academic center grads who may not be regarded as having as much hands on experience. Going to a research oriented residency/fellowship generally is more important for an academic career. However, in some fields the lines are becoming blurred. In a lot of the more competitive residencies it is more or less expected to do a fellowship as a prerequisite to practicing. And fellowships tend to be at academic centers that value research. As mentioned above, you can work in various primary care fields without research, but if you are going into a surgical specialty or a lifestyle specialty, research will often matter.

It's also not exactly clear why you think you will enjoy working in a field if you have no interest in the research in that field. Every field has multiple niches of potential research and you really ought to be able to find an area that interests you. Sounds to me like you have this perception of what constitutes research that isn't accurate. For most specialties we aren't talking about sitting in a lab pipetting and running gels. We are talking about running studies on new treatments, procedures/techniques or imaging. So if you are a surgeon, the research will be surgery related, if radiology, image related. And so on. You try a novel technique on fifty people, compare it to a control group and publish your results -- thats research.

 

[darksurg]

Research is highly recommended. Knowing the attendings is an advantage.

 

[7ec13]

Does anyone know if gap year research counts towards residency applications? I'm currently on my second gap year doing surgical research and will be starting med school this fall. So far my research has resulted in 2 first author pubs, 1 second author pub and a presentation; I'm wondering if this will help with matching into a surgical specialty later on. Or, does the research have to be done while in med school?

 

[DrEnderW]

This is what I was afraid of. I don't like research because I just don't feel interested in it. I've also never did research before.

I would generally not make up your mind you hate something before trying it. I went to college 100% for athletics with no research interest or plan, gave it a shot, and ended up engrossed in a 3 year project that I absolutely loved. This experience gave way to new opportunities that will undoubtably help my career.

Additionally, for highly competitive spots, everyone you're competing with will have done well on step 1. Research can be a nice differentiator. Echoing what others have said, don't go for an academic residency with the goal of producing academic physicians just to get the brand name. Research is an absolutely requirement in residency and especially during a fellowship at many "prestigious" academic centers.

 

[kyamh]

I'm torn every time I think about whether someone ought to participate in research.

On the one hand, you shouldn't have to do something you hate for an extended period of time. An unhappy researcher rarely does good work anyhow.

On the other hand, I believe that physicians are in a profession that expects and requires lifelong learning. As future medical providers, we are expected to be familiar with new trends in medicine and the latest research concerning treatments that may help or harm our future patients. To that end, we have to understand research methods and be able to think critically about an article to judge its implications as well as its limitations. Someone totally untrained in thinking about primary literature or performing research will be poor at identifying badly-constructed studies (bad controls, bad analysis, overstated conclusions, etc) and that's a big negative for a doctor.

I think physicians ought to participate in adding to the scientific community - even just in the form of a case report once a year - and that skills gained while training as a clinical scientist are beneficial to physicians in all practice circumstances.

 

[sourdoughllama]

I'm torn every time I think about whether someone ought to participate in research.

On the one hand, you shouldn't have to do something you hate for an extended period of time. An unhappy researcher rarely does good work anyhow.

On the other hand, I believe that physicians are in a profession that expects and requires lifelong learning. As future medical providers, we are expected to be familiar with new trends in medicine and the latest research concerning treatments that may help or harm our future patients. To that end, we have to understand research methods and be able to think critically about an article to judge its implications as well as its limitations. Someone totally untrained in thinking about primary literature or performing research will be poor at identifying badly-constructed studies (bad controls, bad analysis, overstated conclusions, etc) and that's a big negative for a doctor.

I think physicians ought to participate in adding to the scientific community - even just in the form of a case report once a year - and that skills gained while training as a clinical scientist are beneficial to physicians in all practice circumstances.

I agree that physicians should be required to keep up with science but I disagree that doing research yourself is necessary. I've worked in different labs and I can say confidently that being in lab helped me learn how to do lab techniques, but that's about it. My reasoning skills in terms of studies and interpretation of results are the same. My opinion is that research should be left a requirement for PhDs and an option for MDs who are interested.

 

[theseeker4]

I was under the impression that a lot of private group specialty practices only allow graduates of prestigious residency/fellowship programs into their private practice. Is this incorrect?

If "many" private group specialty practices only allow grads of prestigious residency/fellowship programs, first, how does everyone else find jobs? And second, how do all of these "many" practices find enough physicians to practice there? While there are some elite private practices that limit their pool of "acceptable" applicants to top programs, in general, attending a top med school and then attending a top residency program/fellowship is most important for academic medicine at a top institution, if that is your ultimate goal. Name matters a lot less for private practice.

 

[Law2Doc]

...I've worked in different labs and I can say confidently that being in lab helped me learn how to do lab techniques, but that's about it. My reasoning skills in terms of studies and interpretation of results are the same. My opinion is that research should be left a requirement for PhDs and an option for MDs who are interested.

Again, the whole notion that "research" and working in a lab are somehow fundamentally related is way way off in term of what most people do for "research" in medicine. We are frequently talking about studies in a hospital, with patients or charts, techniques and imaging, not test tubes and beakers.

 

[sourdoughllama]

Again, the whole notion that "research" and working in a lab are somehow fundamentally related is way way off in term of what most people do for "research" in medicine. We are frequently talking about studies in a hospital, with patients or charts, techniques and imaging, not test tubes and beakers.

I'm not saying bench research is the only type of research out there. My point was that I don't believe you need to conduct research yourself to be well versed in science. Nowhere in my post did I insinuate that bench research is the same as research in medicine. That's just the type of lab I've been in.

 

[JJMrK]

Does anyone know if gap year research counts towards residency applications? I'm currently on my second gap year doing surgical research and will be starting med school this fall. So far my research has resulted in 2 first author pubs, 1 second author pub and a presentation; I'm wondering if this will help with matching into a surgical specialty later on. Or, does the research have to be done while in med school?

Absolutely. Any peer-reviewed publication with your name on it goes on your CV for the long haul.

 

[Law2Doc]

I'm not saying bench research is the only type of research out there. My point was that I don't believe you need to conduct research yourself to be well versed in science. Nowhere in my post did I insinuate that bench research is the same as research in medicine. That's just the type of lab I've been in.

Yes but you extrapolated what you learned "in a lab" to what kinds of things you could learn and the value to your education, and concluded that it should be left to PhDs. I would suggest that if you did clinical research in a Hospital, you would have come to the opposite conclusion. You chose something far afield from what you plan to do. But you could have actually done research in the field you plan to work in. If you wanted to do specialty X, you could have done a study in X, doing procedures, testing meds, or doing imaging of patients in field X. That's the kind of research you'd generally do in the course of medical training, not bench stuff. That in fact would impact your learning and skill-set and knowledge base in the field you were going into. You either get to read about studies in field X and tell your patients about them, or you get to be the guy who actually did that research. That's hugely different. and you would never have concluded that that kind of research should be left to PhDs. I think you are trying to extrapolate a premed lab experience to research generally, and it doesn't work here.

 

[sourdoughllama]

Yes but you extrapolated what you learned "in a lab" to what kinds of things you could learn and the value to your education, and concluded that it should be left to PhDs. I would suggest that if you did clinical research in a Hospital, you would have come to the opposite conclusion. You chose something far afield from what you plan to do. But you could have actually done research in the field you plan to work in. If you wanted to do specialty X, you could have done a study in X, doing procedures, testing meds, or doing imaging of patients in field X. That's the kind of research you'd generally do in the course of medical training, not bench stuff. That in fact would impact your learning and skill-set and knowledge base in the field you were going into. You either get to read about studies in field X and tell your patients about them, or you get to be the guy who actually did that research. That's hugely different. and you would never have concluded that that kind of research should be left to PhDs. I think you are trying to extrapolate a premed lab experience to research generally, and it doesn't work here.

Again, I didn't say research is useless for or that it doesn't pertain to MDs - I'm saying it didn't enhance my personal reasoning skills. You feel like you need it to be "the guy who actually did that research." Difference of opinions. If you read my post carefully, I said it should be left to MDs who are interested, and required for PhDs, not that all research should be left for PhDs. If you want to be the best of the best and work at the top academic settings, then of course you'd do your own research and be on top of all the latest technology, but that's not everyone's goal and most definitely not mine. You don't seem to have read my post correctly for the most part

 

[Law2Doc]

Again, I didn't say research is useless for or that it doesn't pertain to MDs - I'm saying it didn't enhance my personal reasoning skills. You feel like you need it to be "the guy who actually did that research." Difference of opinions. If you read my post carefully, I said it should be left to MDs who are interested, and required for PhDs, not that all research should be left for PhDs. If you want to be the best of the best and work at the top academic settings, then of course you'd do your own research and be on top of all the latest technology, but that's not everyone's goal and most definitely not mine. You don't seem to have read my post correctly for the most part

I did misconstrue you post, sorry. But I still don't really agree with your overall thesis that your experience in a "lab" is relevant here. It's like saying being a baseball player makes you an authority on life as a football player. Sure they are both sports , just like clinical and bench research are both research... You get my point. I think one should be left for PhDs perhaps, but only because it's so far afield from what doctors do. The other actually has a lot of benefit for budding doctors, even though you dismiss it as only relevant for those with academic aspirations.

 

[sourdoughllama]

I did misconstrue you post, sorry. But I still don't really agree with your overall thesis that your experience in a "lab" is relevant here. It's like saying being a baseball player makes you an authority on life as a football player. Sure they are both sports , just like clinical and bench research are both research... You get my point. I think one should be left for PhDs perhaps, but only because it's so far afield from what doctors do. The other actually has a lot of benefit for budding doctors, even though you dismiss it as only relevant for those with academic aspirations.

Sorry I wasn't very clear there. I definitely do see the merits of conducting clinical research as a pre med or med student (regardless of career goals), I'm just saying that if your goal is academics then research is a must rather than an option. And you're right, I cant truly knock it till I've tried it. But the point I was addressing earlier from kyamh of "research is to learn how to critically assess information"is true to all research regardless of field or type so I think I do have merit in saying it hasn't enhanced my scientific thinking