How does one find research-friendly residencies?

Not really, but we can provide you with a little bit of information:

1. Fast-Track Residencies
* Generally available in IM (and sometimes Peds). Allows you to do an accelerated residency (2 years instead of 3) followed by fellowship (3-5 years, which includes 2 years of protected research time). When you are done, you are eligible for board certification in IM and the appropriate sub-speciality.

2. Specific Programs
* I've seen programs in Psych, Path, RadOnc/DiagRad residencies that give you protected research time. Sometimes they are a year longer than normal residencies and sometimes not.

I just got into one of these research pathway tracks for internal medicine--there is no one website that lists these programs for IM, but the American Board of Internal Medicine does have a website that describes the "short-tracking" process:

http://www.abim.org/cert/respath.shtm

While there are only a handful of programs with formal research tracks, it appeared to me while interviewing that most programs can make a research track for you, after jumping through a couple hoops.

As for peds, i know that these programs do exist too. the american
board of pediatrics website has a summary of the pathways (the two you
would be interested in are called the accelerated research pathway and
the integrated research pathway):

http://www.abp.org/certinfo/genpeds/gpproc.htm#pathway

a list of the requirements for the accelerated research pathway are
here:

http://www.abp.org/certinfo/genpeds/arp.htm

and the requirements for the integrated research pathway are here:

http://www.abp.org/certinfo/genpeds/irp.htm

BUT, and there is a rather big but, there is a reputation that many
peds programs DO NOT support this concept. here is a website that may
give you a good idea of programs that have it or not (i cannot verify
its accuracy though):

http://www.mstp.uci.edu/currentstudents/residencyandresearch1.php

Hope this helps...

Al

Alhkim,

Could you please tell us a little about your experiences in applying to ABIM fast-track programs? Were they competitive as an MD/PhD applicant? How many places did you apply? Did they all guarantee your fellowship before you started?

Thanks!

To your first and second question:

I found that if 1) you were genuine about pursuing academic medicine for a career (this absolutely needed to be highlighted and repeated several times in your personal statement), 2) you had demonstrated some sort of research savvy during your graduate years (a couple first-author papers and an understanding of how hard things may be as a junior investigator), and 3) showed that you weren't behind the curve clinically, you would be competitive to these programs. It seems that MD/PhDs kinda sorted themselves out into two groups, one that are superstars in the making, and end up at MGH, Brigham, UCSF, Hopkins, etc. (you get the picture), and the other half who are just behind them in terms of scores/grades/etc. (I found myself in the second group). Since the top tier IM programs do not formally present fast-tracking as an option during the applications process but some of the lower top tier/top second-tier IM programs do, I probably looked good to those fast-track programs since the top MD/PhD applicants were really looking at those elite IM programs for residency rather than those programs that have these research tracks as options (just look at the thread labeled MSTP Match 2005).

I also had many comments about my LoR from my PhD mentor, which was very good from what I have been told. You also have to make it clear to him/her that in their letter, academics is going to be your primary career objective.

Also consider that about 2/3 of all MD/PhD graduates over the past 10 or 15 years have completely dropped research out of their career goals--this means that if you are serious about research, you will look like gold to these fast-track programs.

Let me briefly expand on my second point above, about research-savviness. I had several questions about what I wanted from a place as a junior faculty member, and discussed about protected research time from clinical duties, how long you are covered by the startup package so you can get grant money, etc. Just be aware about these issues--you aren't expected to completely understand them, but my first couple interviewers looked at me a bit funny since I admitted to them that I hadn't even thought about them.

To you third question: I applied to many categorical and research-track programs, about a 2/3 to 1/3 ratio favoring categorical simply because there are not many formal research track programs out there. WashU, Michigan, Presby-Cornell, Mayo, UPenn, Vandy, Pitt, UCLA (I believe), U of Minnesota (not well advertised though), and a couple others have them to check off in the ERAS. I checked both Categorical and the Reseach track for all of these. Keep in mind that almost all IM programs will entertain the thought of fast-tracking you though, even though they don't have a formal program as such. Of the programs that had formal fast-tracking, most of them did guarantee a fellowship of your choice at the time you match to their program. These details are a bit hazy to me though...I cannot remember the one or two programs that did offer you a fellowship after PGY-1.

That's all that is coming to me now. I will PM you with more thoughts as they come...

Al

Gfunk6 said:

Alhkim,

Could you please tell us a little about your experiences in applying to ABIM fast-track programs? Were they competitive as an MD/PhD applicant? How many places did you apply? Did they all guarantee your fellowship before you started?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Thanks a lot for the info, especially regarding thinking about junior faculty positions.

Just another thought to add....

I felt like a good portion of my PSTP/research track interviews were recruiting efforts to get me to "commit" to a junior faculty position there. While I did mention that some rudimentary knowledge about issues that surround junior faculty is good to have, several of my interviews really focused on how our institution is the best place to start as a junior faculty (i.e. we are actively expanding our IM department, we offer very generous startup packages, etc). You can talk this with a grain of salt, which you should, but ultimately, i felt like their main objective was to get you to strongly consider continuing your career at that institution. I reason that it is much cheaper for a department to "recruit" new faculty to their institution by getting people to come to this type of program and develop us into investigators versus trying to advertise and actively recruit established investigators or take a risk with a young investigator that they do not have a solid feel for (unlike PSTP trained people, since we trained there). These are just my experiences and may not reflect everyone elses...it'll be interesting if others who have gone down this road have similar experiences.