Academic Medicine

[fotografía]

So I'm interested in pursuing a career in academic medicine (MD), that is, one where my work will achieve some sort of balance between research, patient care, and perhaps teaching. I believe that means I would be a hospital physician, with clinical and lab duties. What kind of specialties are conducive to this career? Pathology is obvious, but I really would prefer my clinical duties to involve patients, not their samples. Oncology? Neurology? Cardiology?

Thanks!

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[fantasty]

So I'm interested in pursuing a career in academic medicine (MD), that is, one where my work will achieve some sort of balance between research, patient care, and perhaps teaching. I believe that means I would be a hospital physician, with clinical and lab duties. What kind of specialties are conducive to this career? Pathology is obvious, but I really would prefer my clinical duties to involve patients, not their samples. Oncology? Neurology? Cardiology?

Thanks!

Honestly, you could really do just about anything. Ever year, Md/Phd students go into every clinical discipline, from very patient oriented (IM/peds/Ob-gyn) to the less so (path/radiology). Some fields are more accepting of a phd and both basic and clinical research. The surgical subspecialties, for example, require a signicant amount of OR time in order to learn and maintain your skills, which makes research harder to do (but certainly not impossible). Some fields have a lot of time "built in" that makes research easier (I've heard from various sources that pathology, dermatology, rad onc, and even emergency medicine can provide a reasonable amount of protected research time). And, in academic medicine, you would be expected to have some productive research in most if not all disciplines - and your research background would make you very attractive to IM/psych/peds/neuro (and so on).

Some of the other regulars may chime in with more details, especially about choosing research and clinical areas that complement each other. For me, my research area was predetermined by my interests and goals (epidemiology) but I think my clinical area will be more determined by the patient populations I like to work with and the diseases I'm interested in (infectious and rheumatologic).