Best resources for acquiring research skills

[Leo260]

Hi everyone!

I'm an incoming first-year and wanted to see if anyone could point me to some useful resources for developing critical research skills.
For some background: I've been a clinical research manager for the past several years in a nuanced sub-field that deals exclusively with pharmaceutically sponsored projects. Because of this, I have extensive experience with things like managing industry-level budget portfolios and multi-site research operations and accountability (SUPER fun..), but much less background on sifting through academic journals for developing novel research ideas, manuscript writing, understanding how to construct methodologies for certain types of projects, etc.

Although I'm attending medical school at a different institution to where I'm currently employed, my PI's are incredibly supportive and have agreed to let me develop and execute projects with them as first author over the next four years as they're starting to prioritize in-house investigator-led clinical studies. This academic center is a pretty amazing research institution and in a city I want to return to for residency/medical practice, so I REALLY want to take advantage of this opportunity as I know it's pretty rare (especially because my medical school, unfortunately, has little to no research opportunities).

I fully understand that I'll need to adjust to the pace/rigor of medical school and succeed academically before even thinking about research, but I'd love to spend the next few months of free time developing these skills so that I can potentially hit the ground running with any ideas I have instead of spending that time learning a good chunk of the logistics.

Any input is appreciated!

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[OnePunchBiopsy]

Acquiring research skills is difficult. I wish there was a book or course out there outlining everything one needs to know about medical research. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, such a thing does not exist.

Unfortunately, the best way to build medical research skills is doing research. As you do more research, you gain insight into why the research question is being asked, and you review the literature for the techniques and major findings of a particular research field.

My suggestion would be reaching out to medical school faculty about getting involved with research that interests you. Building a good relationship with a department with active research projects will be your best resource. If no such opportunities exist at your school, reach out to the plethora of medical student research fellowships that exist (COVID-19 permitting).

Your medical insight will also grow as you progress through medical school. This will help you find new research questions worthy of further study.

 

[slowthai]

Acquiring research skills is difficult. I wish there was a book or course out there outlining everything one needs to know about medical research. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, such a thing does not exist.

Unfortunately, the best way to build medical research skills is doing research. As you do more research, you gain insight into why the research question is being asked, and you review the literature for the techniques and major findings of a particular research field.

My suggestion would be reaching out to medical school faculty about getting involved with research that interests you. Building a good relationship with a department with active research projects will be your best resource. If no such opportunities exist at your school, reach out to the plethora of medical student research fellowships that exist (COVID-19 permitting).

Your medical insight will also grow as you progress through medical school. This will help you find new research questions worthy of further study.

Couldn't agree more. One thing I would say is being well acquainted with stats will really make life tremendously easier for you. You'll be able to jump on a ton of projects just because of those skills alone. Otherwise, you'll learn as you go, just like everything else in research. I've always heard that YouTube is a good place to start learning.

 

[Dr G Oogle]

Acquiring research skills is difficult. I wish there was a book or course out there outlining everything one needs to know about medical research. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, such a thing does not exist.

Unfortunately, the best way to build medical research skills is doing research. As you do more research, you gain insight into why the research question is being asked, and you review the literature for the techniques and major findings of a particular research field.

My suggestion would be reaching out to medical school faculty about getting involved with research that interests you. Building a good relationship with a department with active research projects will be your best resource. If no such opportunities exist at your school, reach out to the plethora of medical student research fellowships that exist (COVID-19 permitting).

Your medical insight will also grow as you progress through medical school. This will help you find new research questions worthy of further study.

funnily enough there is a book
Amazon product

also recommend just diving in and teaching yourself how to do basic stats using R. there are tons of resources on the web.R is very clunky but powerful. Will take at least 1 year to learn how do your basic biostats, but will the effort will be worth the reward