Bench research... Worth it as a med student?

[ecobio]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Meeting with a PI next week to talk about potentially working in his lab, stem cell related research in the field of cardiology. Seems like he's been pretty productive (5 pubs in 2023, 5 more in 2022, none in since though)

FWIW Im mostly interested in academic EM. Obviously, don't really need much research to pursue EM, but i helped with stem cell research before school and am generally interested in continuing. I guess my questions are as follows: 1) does bench research give any meaningful "boost" compared to higher volume of chart review etc 2) how often are MS1s pursuing bench research 3) would this help at all in my pursuit of EM or would it be solely for my own interest?

 

[SurfingDoctor]

Academic EM? What is that? Like doing EM in a major city for a university and getting paid less to do so while pretending to publish?

EM is easily one of the LEAST scientific fields of medicine (next to most surgical and radiographic fields), so you'd be doing it for your own reasons I guess.

Frankly, I don't think the powers that be in EM care if you touched a stem cell or touched a pipette. But they do care about time to "X"... (X being some useless CMS quality metric de jour) so find someone who publishes that and hop on the bandwagon.

 

[EthylMethylMan]

SurfingDoctor nailed it. It’s a buyer’s market in EM right now, and I doubt that will change by the time you’re applying. What’s more, even if you are gunning for a “powerhouse” residency, they’d care much more about research relevant to EM. And as SurfingDoctor said, that would be more along the lines of throughput/time-to-x stuff. Honestly, you could match a great EM program with good grades and SLOEs alone.

Please keep an open mind as far as specialty goes. EM is a good choice for some people. However, for a substantial amount of others, the rosy image you see in med school is shattered when you get to the real world. Procedures that were fun in school and training become a speed bump. The fantasy of fast-paced action dissolves into a quagmire of mostly worried well and intoxicated doofuses. The thrill of resuscitating that 3 AM gunshot wound is sobered by your absolutely devastated sleep patterns. This field allows you to save lives, and it is immensely important, but it is also rife with issues. Maybe it’ll be right for you, but do yourself a favor and approach it with realistic expectations.

 

[ecobio]

Academic EM? What is that? Like doing EM in a major city for a university and getting paid less to do so while pretending to publish?

Ha! What I meant is that I'd love to work in medical education alongside clinical work in the ER. Not sure if that means teaching med students or residents but I'm sure that clarity will come with time. Money is obviously important but has never been a huge motivator of mine. Always loved teaching others. Good point about reducing care time, could be an interesting angle for research too.

SurfingDoctor nailed it. It’s a buyer’s market in EM right now, and I doubt that will change by the time you’re applying. What’s more, even if you are gunning for a “powerhouse” residency, they’d care much more about research relevant to EM. And as SurfingDoctor said, that would be more along the lines of throughput/time-to-x stuff. Honestly, you could match a great EM program with good grades and SLOEs alone.

Please keep an open mind as far as specialty goes. EM is a good choice for some people. However, for a substantial amount of others, the rosy image you see in med school is shattered when you get to the real world. Procedures that were fun in school and training become a speed bump. The fantasy of fast-paced action dissolves into a quagmire of mostly worried well and intoxicated doofuses. The thrill of resuscitating that 3 AM gunshot wound is sobered by your absolutely devastated sleep patterns. This field allows you to save lives, and it is immensely important, but it is also rife with issues. Maybe it’ll be right for you, but do yourself a favor and approach it with realistic expectations.

Definitely keeping an open mind. Worked in the ED for several years before matriculation and it's the only thing that scratched the itch for me. But being a physician is different than scribing/teching, and Im trying to make sure I dont go through med school with blinders. Its also why im thinking more about helping w this research -- if I dont do EM I'd probably shoot for IM? Which this would be helpful for, i assume

 

[mistafab]

Can you do it? yes
Worth it? no
Why? Huge time suck
Why is that bad? because low time means low fun. Low fun equals life sucks.

But can't I be a machine that only studies, works for free in a lab, and gets straight A's, and be happy at the same time? You can try... but that's why so many med students are miserable losers. Then they cry 10 years later about how they "sacrificed their 20s." Guess what -- that's on them. Don't fall into the trap of making your life suck for no reason. Med school should be fun.

 

[amoxicillin_resistant]

Med school should be fun.

dang i forgot to take the pills

 

[VaultArmitage]

As an MD/PhD student, I would recommend NOT doing bench work. Bench work takes so so long to publish, and there's no guarantee it will lead to anything. Much better to do some data analysis or dry lab after all the data is generated, or to just do clinical research. Also, keep in mind that bench research published in a higher quality journal can have a review process of 1yr+

 

[Nontrad_FL_LGBT]

I did a data analysis project for my summer research on an existing data set my PI has, first author paper. I built 3 tools that will be used on future projects and I'll get authorship on them too if I write like a paragraph. So one summer is probably going to turn into 3-5+ pubs before I graduate. My lab puts out several pubs in decent journals each year.

Do data analysis if you have any aptitude at all.

 

[Nontrad_FL_LGBT]

Can you do it? yes
Worth it? no
Why? Huge time suck
Why is that bad? because low time means low fun. Low fun equals life sucks.

But can't I be a machine that only studies, works for free in a lab, and gets straight A's, and be happy at the same time? You can try... but that's why so many med students are miserable losers. Then they cry 10 years later about how they "sacrificed their 20s." Guess what -- that's on them. Don't fall into the trap of making your life suck for no reason. Med school should be fun.

Also agree. I love med school so far. I also drop anything that seems like it wastes my time very quickly so I only commit to things that matter.

 

[Tenk]

Bench work is a terrible idea unless your bench work is cooking up meth, in which case you’d fit right in with most emergency departments.