Academic vs Research vs Primary Care Medicine

[pleaseletmebeadoctor88]

Hi! I saw a secondary question for several years ago that asked the applicants to explain whether they are interested in pursuing a career in academic, research, or primary care medicine. Can someone explain the difference between these three? If I intend to be a practicing surgeon but who works at a teaching hospital and does some research what would that be considered?

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[seeinghowitgoes]

To answer your question, that would be academic medicine.

But whatever school that is I would drop because that is just a horribly stupid question. Just kidding, but this question because is a really dumb one.

Many very prominent primary care doctors have millions in research funding, so how do you separate that from “academic medicine.” Furthermore, how is research vs academic different (nobody in the real world would say they are - there is academic medicine with focuses on research, teaching, or operations but they all fall under the umbrella of academic medicine).

Long story short - academic medicine is traditionally a career where time is split in the pursuit of teaching, research, and clinical care (the three pillars). More colloquially it’s used to mean mean basically anybody practicing in a hospital associated with a university. There is no such thing as “research medicine” or “primary care medicine” on the spectrum of academic medicine to community based medicine (including things like private practice). It’s also never this black and white - many community hospitals have residents and so faculty can be practicing community medicine and teaching, and some academic hospitals house private practice groups who rent space from them.

So overall, it’s a dumb question and they should really just ask “where do you see yourself in 10 years” or something.

 

[pleaseletmebeadoctor88]

Thank you so much!! It really tripped me up because I was like ummm...I want all three???

 

[IlDestriero]

Hi! I saw a secondary question for several years ago that asked the applicants to explain whether they are interested in pursuing a career in academic, research, or primary care medicine. Can someone explain the difference between these three? If I intend to be a practicing surgeon but who works at a teaching hospital and does some research what would that be considered?

If I had to guess they awkwardly fused 2 questions looking for people that are interested in those 3 areas. It would have been a better optional question asking if interested in ... explain your interest.
As to what they meant, who knows.
Primary care is obvious.
Academic medicine likely means the usual- teaching, light-moderate research, mentoring, significant clinical work, etc. at a facility affiliated with a school/teaching program.
Research probably means a career as a tenure track research faculty. These are (usually) people who are conducting significant research, grant funding dependent, run labs and programs, etc. and they often have 75%+ protected non clinical time. These folks practicing any significant amount of clinical medicine are not very common even in the ivory towers in modern times.