Another Question About Research.

[274631]

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So I am a little confused about my 'research' experience. I am a Junior applying next cycle. This summer I did research in a Blood Bank basically auditing autologous donations over the past five years. I am going to continue when I go back home during winter break. However, this was not a very structured experience and I was not given much guidance as to what exactly I should be doing. I basically went to the haematologist in charge of the blood bank and asked him if I could come in and do some research and he basically left me on my own to collect data and do literature research. I think that I have developed a pretty good project from it though and the doc said he would help me get it published if it was good enough. The experience did not last very long maybe 10 weeks (including winter break). Would this count as a meaningful experience and something I should put on my application even if I do not get published?

 

[soundnin]

i too am confused about your experience. where exactly was the research aspect to this? the word auditing is pretty vague, unless i'm missing something here.

 

[Catalystik]

Would this count as a meaningful experience and something I should put on my application even if I do not get published?

Did you start with a hypothesis? Did you develop a study design? Did you collect data, analyze it, and come to a conclusion? Did the research add to human knowledge in a scholarly manner? It it potentially publishable? Then it was research for med school application purposes. Perhaps it only took 10 weeks, but that would make it equal to a summer research experience, which many list.

If it did not qualify as research, it could still be looked on as a special project. This is still potentially listable, but I'd put it in the Other category instead of under Research, similar to a thesis project or a group engineering project that invented something.

Since you had no oversight, though, it might be difficult to get a Letter of Recommendation from the doc who runs the blood bank.

 

[274631]

i too am confused about your experience. where exactly was the research aspect to this? the word auditing is pretty vague, unless i'm missing something here.

To clarify, what I did was review all the blood donations for the last five years and look at things like how many were performed each year, the demographics of the donors, how much of the blood was eventually used, what it was used for, things like that. It requires using raw data to come to conclusions through analysis so I thought it would fall under the heading of research?

 

[274631]

Did you start with a hypothesis? Did you develop a study design? Did you collect data, analyze it, and come to a conclusion? Did the research add to human knowledge in a scholarly manner? It it potentially publishable? Then it was research for med school application purposes. Perhaps it only took 10 weeks, but that would make it equal to a summer research experience, which many list.

If it did not qualify as research, it could still be looked on as a special project. This is still potentially listable, but I'd put it in the Other category instead of under Research, similar to a thesis project or a group engineering project that invented something.

Since you had no oversight, though, it might be difficult to get a Letter of Recommendation from the doc who runs the blood bank.

Thanks for the response! This makes me feel alot better about it. Not sure I will necessarily classify it as research in that sense as I did not really have a hypothesis I was testing.
I considered the letter of recommendation thing. While collecting data I spoke to and interacted with the nurses, would it make sense to get a letter from one of them possibly co-signed by the doc?

 

[soundnin]

Thanks for the response! This makes me feel alot better about it. Not sure I will necessarily classify it as research in that sense as I did not really have a hypothesis I was testing.
I considered the letter of recommendation thing. While collecting data I spoke to and interacted with the nurses, would it make sense to get a letter from one of them possibly co-signed by the doc?

since you still have time you could try and develop a deeper relationship with the hematologist, but this sounds like a part time job kind of deal, so it wouldn't exactly weigh that heavily compared to say a research mentor or professor even. but i'm sure it doesn't hurt!

 

[Catalystik]

Thanks for the response! This makes me feel alot better about it. Not sure I will necessarily classify it as research in that sense as I did not really have a hypothesis I was testing.
I considered the letter of recommendation thing. While collecting data I spoke to and interacted with the nurses, would it make sense to get a letter from one of them possibly co-signed by the doc?

When you return this winter, you might make a point of "cultivating" one of the nurses with that purpose in mind as well as the lead doc. It would work fine to have a nurse write a letter and have the doc co-sign it.