Does a research fellowship compensate for a lack of PhD?

[Drrrrrr. Celty]

So I'm obviously just premed but in strong interested in biological psychiatry, clinical applications of behavioral neuroscience and etc.
As such since my interests are clinical I want to go to med school. But after that I want to get a research fellowship in a neuroscience field so that I can practice and do academic research looking at psychopharmacology and using it on animal models and learn about circuits that may be homologous in humans.

So given that are there any issues with this plan? Is a psychiatrist with a research fellowship not going to manage to pull something like this off?

Will it be harder for a DO who has trained at a good ACGME residency to pull this off?

Any other comments relevant? I've considered clinical psychology but I'm more interested in the biological aspects of treatment than just knowing that certain therapies work.

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[dl2dp2]

So I'm obviously just premed but in strong interested in biological psychiatry, clinical applications of behavioral neuroscience and etc.
As such since my interests are clinical I want to go to med school. But after that I want to get a research fellowship in a neuroscience field so that I can practice and do academic research looking at psychopharmacology and using it on animal models and learn about circuits that may be homologous in humans.

If you are interested in animal models, I would say getting a PhD is very desirable. If you are only interested in clinical trials work in psychopharmacology, it is not as necessary, but would still be advantageous.

So given that are there any issues with this plan? Is a psychiatrist with a research fellowship not going to manage to pull something like this off?

In terms of research, you can't really expect to get into a research fellowship out of any particular residency. And in terms of a research career, not everyone getting out of a research fellowship gets funded to do research. The rule of thumb is 10% and 10% -- i.e. 10% of research oriented residents go into a research fellowship and 10% of those eventually have a successful federally funded research career. I would aim for a top residency program and a top fellowship, and aim for your grant application to be in the top 10%.

Will it be harder for a DO who has trained at a good ACGME residency to pull this off?

Without a doubt. I don't know of a single prominent researcher who's DO trained. Maybe someone can enlighten me, but within the small community of psychiatrist-scientists, even including clinical/translational scientists, there are extremely few DOs.

Any other comments relevant? I've considered clinical psychology but I'm more interested in the biological aspects of treatment than just knowing that certain therapies work.

This is a very competitive pathway. I would aim for high MCAT, a top programs (MD or MD/PhD), a top research heavy residency (which means good grades and research in med school), and a top research fellowship. I would also recommend speaking to a local mentor at your university.

 

[Drrrrrr. Celty]

Problem is I'm pretty split. Admittedly I think I'd love working with people. But I also like learning about new findings within psychology and neuroscience. And I do love conceptually thinking about how things work and coming up with hypothesis. But that might just be more me liking to learn than anything.
But I guess in the end I'm very much interested in psychopathology and helping people and thus probably psychiatry would be best.

So it's generally an uphill battle for a psychiatrist to do psychiatric research with mice for example even with a research fellowship?
I mean what are they ( research fellowships) even good for then if its 3 years long and only 10% get to actually do any research afterward?

 

[vistaril]

Without a doubt. I don't know of a single prominent researcher who's DO trained. .

true, but I bet a lot of this is self selection to some degree.....if a DO student wanted to do research, there are plenty of programs with strong neuroscience research going on that consider DO's. Most DO's I know just have little to no interest in research.

 

[notdeadyet]

if a DO student wanted to do research, there are plenty of programs with strong neuroscience research going on that consider DO's. Most DO's I know just have little to no interest in research.

Agreed. The former head of the MIND Institute at UC Davis and current director of CAP at UCSF is a DO. And that's just off the top of my head from someone who isn't a DO and was in a part of the country where I had very, very little exposure to them.

 

[dl2dp2]

true, but I bet a lot of this is self selection to some degree.....if a DO student wanted to do research, there are plenty of programs with strong neuroscience research going on that consider DO's. Most DO's I know just have little to no interest in research.

I don't disagree. However I do think that there is a systematic disadvantage in terms of building a research career for DOs. You need your resume to be really tippty top for career development awards. You don't want to do a DO if you don't have to.

 

[dl2dp2]

So it's generally an uphill battle for a psychiatrist to do psychiatric research with mice for example even with a research fellowship?
I mean what are they ( research fellowships) even good for then if its 3 years long and only 10% get to actually do any research afterward?

It's an uphill battle for anyone to do any kind of neuroscience research in the United States with funding rates hovering around 10-20%. Most MDPhDs with extensive basic neuroscience training still undergo research fellowship training after residency prior to applying for a K award. You would need to compete with people like that at the federal level in order to stand a chance to get funded.

Research training is not designed so that everyone goes through it is going to get a job doing research later. It's sort of like a lottery ticket. If you don't do it, you definitely have NO shot at doing research. But if you do do it, it's not a promise that you will in the end get to do it. It's kind of like how med school is a lottery ticket for derm. Suppose you really want to do dermatology, and you know that only a small number of med students are competitive enough for it, would you ask the question "what's the point of going to med school?" It's not that people who do a research fellowship don't want to have a research career, it's that it's really hard to get funded.

 

[michaelrack]

If you want to be one of the top researchers (and get funded) in psychiatry, listen to the advice of those on this thread.

But if you want to be an academician who does some clinical research, a PhD is not necessary. A research fellowship is not necessary but is helpful. Any statistical knowledge you can gain will be helpful.

It's not that hard to get a junior faculty position at a mid-tier institution and get some research mentorship. When I was at the U of MS, I did some work on the Jackson Heart Study data; and did a little work on it later (after I left academia) that resulted in a publication: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22841028.
If I had stayed at the U of MS instead of going into private practice, I could easily by now be first author on several similary quality publications.
One factor that worked to my advantage in academia was my combined training (med/psych, and then sleep)- it can be helpful to be able to cross departmental lines.

All that is required is that you become a solid psychiatrist and be willing to do some grunt work.

 

[billypilgrim37]

But if you want to be an academician who does some clinical research, a PhD is not necessary. A research fellowship is not necessary but is helpful. Any statistical knowledge you can gain will be helpful.

If you want to be a co-investigator (a perfectly happy role for many of us who don't want to live and die by the whims of a capricious funding agency), neither is absolutely necessary. If your first words weren't SAS code and you require more than 4 hours a night of sleep and want to see your family every once in a while, the Co-I route is perfectly noble.

If you want to be a principal, then at least a research fellowship will be necessary unless you are in some other way able to publish several first author papers in good journals and demonstrate the sort of methodological skills that would be gleaned in a research fellowship. This is essentially impossible nowadays, though probably wasn't even ten years ago. (The answer to most questions about applying for a K-award is "more first author publications")

The top institutions are good at getting K-awards funded, so while the overall numbers are bad, the numbers coming out of MGH, Yale, Stanford, UCSD, Pitt, etc. are much better, and aren't even necessarily all that discouraging. I don't have the figures in front of me, but some of these institutions historically get about 75% of their K awards funded (though the belt is forever tightening). Part of this is because they subject their research fellows' K-award applications to the same level of scrutiny internally as they will at NIMH.

I don't know what proportion of K-awardees are successful at getting an RO1s. And if you don't get an RO1, you're simply not in the game. For a research assistant professor, an RO1 is often necessary for promotion to associate in a good department.

And all of this is why I got off the research crazy train!

 

[michaelrack]

If you want to be a principal, then at least a research fellowship will be necessary unless you are in some other way able to publish several first author papers in good journals and demonstrate the sort of methodological skills that would be gleaned in a research fellowship. This is essentially impossible nowadays, though probably wasn't even ten years ago. n!

Since I have been (mostly) out of academia since 2005, I won't argue with you. To support your point, I will admit that from the time I started my sleep fellowship at the Univ of MS in 2002 to the time I left my faculty position in 2005, it did become progressively harder to get IRB approval (more paperwork) for even simple research projects doing things like chart review. It did become progressively harder to do research on an informal/part-time basis. Back then, there were opportunities for jr. faculty to learn about the research process; and there was a huge database (The Jackson Heart Study) available for data mining, with the assistance of statisticians. I will trust you when you say that such avenues for getting into research are much more limited today (and like I said previously, I don't have any experience/knowledge of funding for research).

 

[Jorje286]

At the end of the day when your grant application will be reviewed the only things about your background that will matter are 1) how many publications you have 2) where did you publish 3) what kind of research have you performed. These will matter much, much more than having the PhD letters after your name.

So yeah, it's theoretically possible to be as competitive as a PhD with a research fellowship. BUT, you will likely need more time to amass the number and quality of papers than someone who already has a 3/4 publications from a PhD. A quality PhD will also help you land those competitive residency positions at the top academic places even with an average clinical profile, where it's much more likely to build a research career. There are also advantages for not doing a PhD: you will be working straight on a topic that you have committed yourself to.

IMO, if you are absolutely sure that you want to do research and undergo the sacrifice needed (and it's a big sacrifice and needs a lot of soul searching, self-evaluation and ability to determine whether you have the talent and inspiration to go down such a tough road), then doing a PhD is a better choice. But I don't think it's absolutely required.