Can one become a physician scientist solely with MD degree or they need a PhD? Does one need to do a specific residency after medical school to be physician scientist? Is physician scientist 100 percent research? How is the earning?
Answers by order asked:
1) Yes, you can be an MD only. You don't have to have a PhD. The PhD buys you more time to learn and become proficient at specific research skills (and also teach failure better in my opinion) and involves tuition coverage. The MD only path generally requires additional training too, either during residency and fellowship, and the skill set is generally less in my opinion, but the advantage is you are a practicing physician faster.
2) No, skies the limit. Pick the residency you are most interested in as you will be doing it for the rest of your life (the same can not be guaranteed for a physician scientist). Though, general residencies in medicine or pediatrics will not provide enough time to learn research skills and thus you typically require additional post-residency training via fellowships.
3) They wish! No, typical a career development grant will provide 75% salary-time coverage. Once that is complete, an independent award, will provide about 20 to 40% salary-time coverage. In order to have 100% research coverage (which is possible but incredibly rare) one would need at least 3+ independent grants.
4) If you are looking for money, physician scientist is not the right path. Generally speaking, you will always make less than colleagues in the same field doing clinical work. Seeing patients generates hospital revenue that one sees in their paycheck. Doing research gets the hospital/university prestige (and provides them money), but you won't see a dime of that. That being said, the pay is comparable to what the average salary of one's own specialty is.
