Concerned about research imbalance

[blissworm]

I am interested in academic medicine, and towards that end I have participated in a lot of research during college. Not as much as what would be expected for MD-PhD, and I am also not interested in being a physician-scientist but rather a clinician who is actively involved in several projects and attends conferences/works with journal editorial boards regularly. Programs like Cleveland Clinic and MD programs with dedicated research time seem to be the perfect balance to me.

I plan to list four research experiences on my AMCAS (applying this cycle). However, the more I have read about successful applicants, the more I realize my research might not mean much. I was mostly in a data collection role for much of my research activities, especially those I did during college. I had limited intellectual contribution and virtually no role in hypothesis generation and data analytics.

Since January, I have started working on two other projects where I have a much bigger role and more intellectual contribution. What worries me is my total hours in these research activities, where I am contributing more, will be a fraction of the hours of my research during college. Furthermore, my research in college netted co-authorship on over 15 abstracts/papers; i.e. all my publications come from research where I was in a smaller role. I am even considering leaving these publications out entirely since I did not contribute too much to them beyond collecting much of the data for them. Finally, the research projects I am working on now where I have a much bigger role are not technically hypothesis-driven...one is descriptive and another is observational.

I have repeatedly seen people stress that what matters in research is not productivity but your role and what you contributed. I seem to be in the opposite spot of most applicants where for a lot of my research hours I was part of a big team doing data collection and getting rewarded with publications, but unable to offer much else beyond that.

Is anyone in a similar role? I am unsure what to do, or if this raises eyebrows for the research-heavy programs I am interested in.

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[deleted1135362]

I was kind of in a similar boat this cycle. My application was heavily research based, and I got several interviews to the top research medical schools. However, when it came to acceptances, I was WL to all of them. The point being, be prepared to thoroughly explain why you want to do medicine instead of a PhD or MD/PhD. Also, do NOT over emphasize research too much in your application, like I did. In hindsight, I talked about it too much and I think that bit me in the a**. I believe you should still list all your contributions and papers, as that looks very impressive. However, do not sell yourself too much as a researcher.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Can you pause and take a few years as a research assistant, or get a certification in clinical research?

 

[blissworm]

Can you pause and take a few years as a research assistant, or get a certification in clinical research?

I am not sure I want to do that. I have plenty of research experience (it sounds like we might be in the territory of too much) and I am eager to get a move on with my clinical career. I am sure I want to practice clinical medicine so it's not like I am apprehensive about it; I have almost 700 hrs experience as an MA so I have also explored patient care in detail.

 

[blissworm]

I was kind of in a similar boat this cycle. My application was heavily research based, and I got several interviews to the top research medical schools. However, when it came to acceptances, I was WL to all of them. The point being, be prepared to thoroughly explain why you want to do medicine instead of a PhD or MD/PhD. Also, do NOT over emphasize research too much in your application, like I did. In hindsight, I talked about it too much and I think that bit me in the a**. I believe you should still list all your contributions and papers, as that looks very impressive. However, do not sell yourself too much as a researcher.

Do you mind me asking, did you have clinical experience and non-clinical service too?

 

[LizzyM]

The point of your application should be that you want to be a clinician and that your work as a medical assistant has helped you test your interest in clinical care and that is the path you wish to pursue. You can add that you are interested in contributing to improvements in clinical care through research and service some day as a peer reviewer and perhaps even as a member of an editorial board of a medical journal and for this reason you are interested in pursuing a career in academic medicine.

Data collection is one of those necessary, and unsexy, parts of research. Some academics, particularly some non-clinicians, may fault you if you have not acquired skills at the bench (you were collecting data through interviews or surveys or collecting samples quite literally in a field). However, you may have had some skills that will be relevant to research you might do as a med student. Did you consent subjects? Did you have to undergo training for data collection or periodically have your work compared with that of others to determine inter-rater reliability? Were you involved in checks on the quality of the data and asked to correct records that appeared to have obvious errors (body weight recorded as 990 kilos). Don't worry to much about how much data collection you did. You did it because it paid well, or you enjoyed it, or you were committed to the topic for some reason. Make that part of your story as to how you have tested your interest in academic medicine and what you have learned about the editorial process. (Did you know that JAMA offers a one-year fellowship in medical editing?)

 

[blissworm]

The point of your application should be that you want to be a clinician and that your work as a medical assistant has helped you test your interest in clinical care and that is the path you wish to pursue. You can add that you are interested in contributing to improvements in clinical care through research and service some day as a peer reviewer and perhaps even as a member of an editorial board of a medical journal and for this reason you are interested in pursuing a career in academic medicine.

Data collection is one of those necessary, and unsexy, parts of research. Some academics, particularly some non-clinicians, may fault you if you have not acquired skills at the bench (you were collecting data through interviews or surveys or collecting samples quite literally in a field). However, you may have had some skills that will be relevant to research you might do as a med student. Did you consent subjects? Did you have to undergo training for data collection or periodically have your work compared with that of others to determine inter-rater reliability? Were you involved in checks on the quality of the data and asked to correct records that appeared to have obvious errors (body weight recorded as 990 kilos). Don't worry to much about how much data collection you did. You did it because it paid well, or you enjoyed it, or you were committed to the topic for some reason. Make that part of your story as to how you have tested your interest in academic medicine and what you have learned about the editorial process. (Did you know that JAMA offers a one-year fellowship in medical editing?)

Thank you for your reply.

Yes, what I love about research is that it can both teach you more about the clinical problems you are working on and you can translate questions you see in the clinical setting to a search for improvements and answers. It is why all of my research exposure is in heavily clinical settings, with patient data, and/or with physician supervisors.

I do have two years of bench lab work, but eventually decided that I wanted to be in a more clinically relevant setting even for my research.

I appreciate your suggestions for how to discuss what I have learned and come away from my experiences with. Those are great suggestions! And the JAMA fellowship sounds like something I would definitely do later in my career.

 

[blissworm]

Yes, 500 hours clinical experience (paid and volunteer), and many non-clincal also. Check out a post I made WAMC: 4.0/517/Reapplicant

Geez - your list of schools that you're waiting to hear from are at the top of my list! Really hoping for the best for you, especially CCLCM

Thanks for sharing and good luck to you.

 

[toastedbutter]

I'm kind of in a similar situation. I think as long as you have a good answer for what attracts you to clinical medicine you should be fine. A lot of research work is data collection, nothing wrong with it. Just make sure you understand in detail all the research your name is attached to well, even if it's stuff that you didn't help with beyond data collection.