3rd Year Research Month

[DOme2009]

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ok, so i've looked at the past threads about research during your 3rd year but they were mostly about continuous research throughout the year - has anyone done a research month as an elective? if so, how did you go about setting it up? did you have any trouble convincing the research dept. that you were serious about research even if you would only be there for a month? input appreciated, thanks all.

 

[fakin' the funk]

ok, so i've looked at the past threads about research during your 3rd year but they were mostly about continuous research throughout the year - has anyone done a research month as an elective? if so, how did you go about setting it up? did you have any trouble convincing the research dept. that you were serious about research even if you would only be there for a month? input appreciated, thanks all.

??? Research "throughout the 3rd year" ???

 

[DOme2009]

??? Research "throughout the 3rd year" ???

odd as it sounds, some people can time-manage like a mofo and complete a research project putting in time on weekends they're not on call and maybe evenings. not sure how, but some people have managed to do it.

 

[Ypo.]

Our school is forcing us to do a research project during third year. As crazy as that sounds.

 

[DOme2009]

forcing you to do a project sounds pretty rough, but it makes you a MUCH more competitive applicant when applying for residency, esp. if you get published. i'm sure there are ppl in your class who are like '$#@& it, i'm doing family or peds or whatever' and aren't looking to match into ucsf rads but a research project can def. help compensate for less than stellar board scores or clinical rotation grades.

 

[Ypo.]

forcing you to do a project sounds pretty rough, but it makes you a MUCH more competitive applicant when applying for residency, esp. if you get published. i'm sure there are ppl in your class who are like '$#@& it, i'm doing family or peds or whatever' and aren't looking to match into ucsf rads but a research project can def. help compensate for less than stellar board scores or clinical rotation grades.

It's not going to get published. They just want us to have the experience of setting up and then carrying out a research project. There is very little funding, and we are essentially left on our own to do it.

Our group is looking at how playing sports (football vs track vs no sports) in high school affects long term health outcomes.


I completely agree with you about research helping, but I think that they should just force us to do it in between 1st and 2nd year, or during 2nd year like some schools do. Third year is the worst year to do it.

 

[DHMO]

ok, so i've looked at the past threads about research during your 3rd year but they were mostly about continuous research throughout the year - has anyone done a research month as an elective? if so, how did you go about setting it up? did you have any trouble convincing the research dept. that you were serious about research even if you would only be there for a month? input appreciated, thanks all.

It would be very difficult to complete any significant research in a month. If you are set on doing this, there are some things you need to look for in a project. 1) A retrospective clinical project for which YOU can do the leg work (getting physicians to read studies,etc. . . for you will take much longer than you anticipate). Don't even think about doing any basic science research. 2) The project needs to be setup and ready to go. By this I mean that you need to already have IRB approval for the study, and if possible, already have the patients identified who will make up the data for the project. Large academic instituions will likely have some projects like this--where it was started, but fell through the cracks. You may be lucky enough to find a project for which data has already been partially or fully collected, but no one has had time to analyze it or write the manuscript (this is the ideal situation for you) 3) Work with someone who is publishing a lot right now-as they are likely quite efficient with their research.

Of course, you could definitely get a case report done in a month, but this is not really 'research' and is not regarded as highly by admissions committees.

Best of luck.

 

[Blade28]

I did a "research month" during my MS-IV year - but research during your third year? All clinical, and done throughout the year.

 

[zeloc]

If you have the time to do it, I think its a good idea. The main thing is having a good faculty member to work with. I would try to find someone with a lot of publications, because then you know that the person is interested in clinically relevant projects and you will learn more from someone who is making a contribution like that. You can do a significant amount of work on a research project in one month, and after that period you can continue to work on data analysis, etc.

 

[MadameLULU]

Your best bet for publication is to find a project where the data has already been collected. You can probably help analyze and write it up in that month.

My school is very flexible about doing research. You can take as much time off during third year (we have more time ~ 2 years to do our core rotations) for research or whatever. We just need to contact the department that we're interested in working with and the registrar and then it's set up.

 

[hale-bopp]

I did a month of research during third year. It was a basic science project I had been working on in my "free" time in the preclinical years, basically, I wrote a petition to the deans asking to defer a month of my third year core electives to spend some focused time on my project. (and a bunch of other reasons - it was a well thought out and well supported request) It was an awesome opportunity, but making up a third year rotation as a fourth year was a b!tch.