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Academic medicine vs. non-academic clinical practice
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Yes, there are positions at many schools where you can do minimal to no amount of research. It just depends how bad the school needs attendings, or what their overall mission is. It also helps if you have a specialty that is very niche, where the school may be willing to accept that you are not in it for the full professorship, but they still want their residents to get exposed to your specialty.
However, while I rarely ever encourage someone to fib a little bit on their application, if I was writing secondaries to those schools, I'd probably say I am very interested in research whether or not I was.
However, while I rarely ever encourage someone to fib a little bit on their application, if I was writing secondaries to those schools, I'd probably say I am very interested in research whether or not I was.
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First some of the terms you use are not mutually exclusive -- you can do academic medicine in a primary care field.
Second, teaching/training residents and med students to a large extent occurs in the wards, not the classroom and anyone who works at a place where rotations occur (whether an academic center or community hospital) is going to be expected to teach or train those residents. So don't picture a classroom setting when you hear academic medicine.
Third, while there are multiple metrics used and you can excel at other areas (teaching, administrative committees) without doing research in academic medicine, it's much harder to get promoted or retained in an academic setting if you are just the guy who teaches. Doing research and ideally getting grants is a boon to an academic career and it will be tough getting the better bonus or getting promoted over those that do research. So yeah I'd say the "publish or perish" mentality is a good one to have if you choose academic medicine. Now research tends to be clinical, not bench work so you may never have to set foot in a lab or run a gel, but it's still a good idea to regard some form of research part of the job.
Second, teaching/training residents and med students to a large extent occurs in the wards, not the classroom and anyone who works at a place where rotations occur (whether an academic center or community hospital) is going to be expected to teach or train those residents. So don't picture a classroom setting when you hear academic medicine.
Third, while there are multiple metrics used and you can excel at other areas (teaching, administrative committees) without doing research in academic medicine, it's much harder to get promoted or retained in an academic setting if you are just the guy who teaches. Doing research and ideally getting grants is a boon to an academic career and it will be tough getting the better bonus or getting promoted over those that do research. So yeah I'd say the "publish or perish" mentality is a good one to have if you choose academic medicine. Now research tends to be clinical, not bench work so you may never have to set foot in a lab or run a gel, but it's still a good idea to regard some form of research part of the job.
Bold: Even though those terms aren't mutually exclusive, those were the only 5 options offered by the prompts, so I feel inclined to choose one specific "practice setting" even if it can sometimes include the others.
Underlined: Sorry, I probably should have been more clear, I didn't mean teaching in a classroom setting (although I'd consider doing that late in my career). I just meant training residents and med students in a clinical setting.
Red: Great, I'm glad to hear that research tends to be clinical rather than bench work. That's definitely something I could see myself doing. Looks like I'm going to choose academic medicine for these prompts, thank you for all the info!
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the term you're looking for is "clinician educator," they know what that means
you don't have to be at an academic medical center to have such a job, there are plenty of community residency programs that are glad to have attendings willing to take the paycut and PITA to supervise residents
you would be expected to write up interesting case studies with residents and med students at a minimum
there's a lot of fluff or qualitative research that goes on, in fact if you are involved being employed this way in educating residents at a program some of the ACGME requirements I have read stipulate that faculty should show some evidence of ongoing scholarship in their field (whatever that means, like I said, conferences, posters, case studies and the like might be sufficient in some places)
some community programs will still allow you to work with med students if they are affiliated with an academic center or just set up to take them
you don't necessarily need to be doing wet bench research or high powered clinical trials, quality control and the like that relies on chart review (grunt work which you pimp out to med students/residents) etc is fine, you don't need to be a stats guru either
right now you need to appear open to the research experience and willing to pursue it
and I would advise you to get involved in research in med school because the box checking doesn't stop just cuz you matriculate
I wasn't going for anything competitive or high powered, so I didn't do research in med school, and so I didn't go to that type of residency, and I expressed wanting to be a clinician educator, most likely in a community program, and they all seemed to like that just fine
some residencies have "education" tracks meant to prepare you for this type of role
sometimes being involved in med ed is being private practice and affiliating with a local med school so you can precept the students
how does this matter to you? well now you can speak intelligently and realistically about a 10 year plan in medicine that is heavy on the teaching and light on the research
@Law2Doc 's point are well taken though. I can't speak to job security in the types of positions I'm talking about.
you don't have to be at an academic medical center to have such a job, there are plenty of community residency programs that are glad to have attendings willing to take the paycut and PITA to supervise residents
you would be expected to write up interesting case studies with residents and med students at a minimum
there's a lot of fluff or qualitative research that goes on, in fact if you are involved being employed this way in educating residents at a program some of the ACGME requirements I have read stipulate that faculty should show some evidence of ongoing scholarship in their field (whatever that means, like I said, conferences, posters, case studies and the like might be sufficient in some places)
some community programs will still allow you to work with med students if they are affiliated with an academic center or just set up to take them
you don't necessarily need to be doing wet bench research or high powered clinical trials, quality control and the like that relies on chart review (grunt work which you pimp out to med students/residents) etc is fine, you don't need to be a stats guru either
right now you need to appear open to the research experience and willing to pursue it
and I would advise you to get involved in research in med school because the box checking doesn't stop just cuz you matriculate
I wasn't going for anything competitive or high powered, so I didn't do research in med school, and so I didn't go to that type of residency, and I expressed wanting to be a clinician educator, most likely in a community program, and they all seemed to like that just fine
some residencies have "education" tracks meant to prepare you for this type of role
sometimes being involved in med ed is being private practice and affiliating with a local med school so you can precept the students
how does this matter to you? well now you can speak intelligently and realistically about a 10 year plan in medicine that is heavy on the teaching and light on the research
@Law2Doc 's point are well taken though. I can't speak to job security in the types of positions I'm talking about.
