Doing research as an MD/PhD?

[fridayed]

I'm a pre-med student that would like to become an MD/PhD. As far as a PhD goes, I'd want to go for something in biophysics or anthropology (preferably biological, but cultural works too).

How does one balance work as an MD and their research as a PhD, particularly with these two fields (% time distribution would be nice here)? Is there a certain type of research or type of doctor that one would be limited to as an MD/PhD?

For example, would research have to be medically based? Would field research or basic research be okay? Would my specialty be a limiting factor in the research I can do (presumably as a result of job flexibility)?

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[Mr Avante]

I'm a pre-med student that would like to become an MD/PhD. As far as a PhD goes, I'd want to go for something in biophysics or anthropology (preferably biological, but cultural works too).

How does one balance work as an MD and their research as a PhD, particularly with these two fields (% time distribution would be nice here)? Is there a certain type of research or type of doctor that one would be limited to as an MD/PhD?

For example, would research have to be medically based? Would field research or basic research be okay? Would my specialty be a limiting factor in the research I can do (presumably as a result of job flexibility)?

MD/Phd programs are designed for those wanting to become research physicians.
However, depending on the institution, there are doctoral programs that aren't medically based at all.
Here is an example: Harvard MD/Phd, they have both biophysics and medical anthropology.
Usually the average programs are Biochemistry, Genetics, Molecular Biology, etcetera...

You have to take into consideration the time spent in medical school.

 

[PTPoeny]

I'm a pre-med student that would like to become an MD/PhD. As far as a PhD goes, I'd want to go for something in biophysics or anthropology (preferably biological, but cultural works too).

How does one balance work as an MD and their research as a PhD, particularly with these two fields (% time distribution would be nice here)? Is there a certain type of research or type of doctor that one would be limited to as an MD/PhD?

For example, would research have to be medically based? Would field research or basic research be okay? Would my specialty be a limiting factor in the research I can do (presumably as a result of job flexibility)?

You may want to go spend some time perusing the physician scientist forum.

Career paths as an MD/PhD range from 100% clinical to 100% bench research. 80% research/20%clinical is a popular model. Realistically, your protected research time is dependent on your ability to get funded and/or departmental support. Most commonly purple get hired on in a department and do research and practice in that sane department. Clearly that isn't the model you plan on following. What kind of career mix would you want if it was completely up to you? How do you see your clinical practice informing your research and vice versa?

 

[karayaa]

For example, would research have to be medically based? Would field research or basic research be okay?

Kind of and yes. You're aiming to be a medical scientist. A physician investigator. Your research is supposed to improve health/care for society. That's why your education is free (no med school debt to worry about) if you do a NIH MSTP MD/PhD program. But it doesn't have to be "medical" per se - it could be health economics, education, social science, human science research.

Would my specialty be a limiting factor in the research I can do (presumably as a result of job flexibility)?

MD/PhDs often work in academic medicine - where they can be attending doctors as well as researchers/educators.
They typically do research within their speciality - eg ID doctor does ID research, paeds doctor does paeds research.
If your specialty is more general, you generally have more leeway (social sciences etc). Also if you find a special fellowship with that focus.
What do you mean by job flexibility?

Maybe spend some time researching MD/PhDs on the web - eg
https://www.aamc.org/students/research/mdphd/why_pursue_an_md-phd/
https://www.aamc.org/students/aspiring/basics/286092/md-phd.html
http://web.jhu.edu/prepro/Forms/MD.PhD.Karlo.Presentation.pdf
http://biology.nd.edu/assets/31650/preparing_for_and_applying_to_md_or_phd_programs.pdf
https://www.bcm.edu/education/progr...-program/documents/mdphd-training-careers.pdf

 

[karayaa]

Career paths as an MD/PhD range from 100% clinical to 100% bench research.

100% clinical? really? That seems super rare. Do you know what speciality/PhD field that was?
100% bench/clinical/translational is much more likely.

 

[Aerus]

100% clinical? really? That seems super rare. Do you know what speciality/PhD field that was?
100% bench/clinical/translational is much more likely.

It's a spectrum. You'd be surprised how many MD/PhD's end up doing only clinical work. It happens and, from my experience in the hospital, it happens more often than one would think when considering the purpose of an MD/PhD track.

 

[CarlosDanger]

The traditional physician scientist is someone who basically does translational bench research, and is usually running their own lab. An MD/PhD in 100% clinical practice is usually there because they became disillusioned at some point with some aspect of research and decide to go in a different direction. I would agree that 20% clinical practice is about the most an MD/PhD will stomach. Usually when you finish med school and a traditional residency, you'll apply for fellowships based on your clinical interests which would usually be the same as your research interests. During your fellowship you would find a lab in that field/department, complete the clinical aspect of the fellowship while working in the lab, establish a specific research direction, publish as much as humanly possibly for as many years as it takes to find a faculty job/whenever your fellowship ends, and then go from there.

There are other ways to incorporate nontraditional fields, but you would want a strong sense of direction and a vision for what that is to justify to adcoms or yourself as to why you would want an MD/PhD to pursue those aims. For example, if you want to do something completely non-medical or basic NSF funded type research, a person could argue that you can do that stuff much more easily by just getting a PhD and not bothering with the MD at all.

From my perspective, its not really much of a "balance" of two careers. You're meant to be more of a straight researcher. When you think about how competitive it is right now to have a successful research career, it requires brilliance and a 150% time commitment. You're going to be out there in the world of NIH funding sequester competing with PhDs who don't have any clinical obligations at all in the lab 7 days a week, so if you're in the clinic even a small amount of time, that PhD will out-compete you for grants and productive capacity.

 

[fridayed]

That's part of the problem--I'm unsure of how my clinical practices would inform my research, especially in radiology, my current specialty of interest (obviously that's likely to change once I'm actually in med school).

Basically, there are so many fields I have a deep interest in that I want to be at least somewhat involved in as many as possible; I'm largely drawn to biophysics and biological anthropology for their interdisciplinary nature, and one of the things I love about radiology is that it clearly relates to just about every other specialty out there.

I'd love to do something like do research in human behavior/cognition, especially on a comparative basis with other organisms. I'd love to be able to explain not just how humans think/operate, but why we think/operate the way we do, and what separates us from other life-forms.

But I'd also love research in something like epigenetics, or looking into how cancer cells react and behave in various environments, or maybe learning more about biological markers of various types of cancer cells.

Obviously, these later topics are more related to medicine than what I first mentioned; I imagine for those topics, it would be perfectly feasible to focus on these as an MD/PhD. But since, as stated earlier, I'd like to be involved in a broad range of fields, I'd also like to know whether or not it would be feasible to be involved in research more along the lines of (though not necessarily exactly the same as) what I first mentioned.

 

[CarlosDanger]

That all sounds cool to me! You don't have to have it all figured out before you get into your program, just the broad strokes of what you want your career to look like...have your own lab? biotech? clinical research? Do you want to do mostly clinical practice? Don't really like clinical practice but want the perspective of an MD? Stuff like that.

If you choose MD/PhD, once you start rotating through different labs and learning about different projects, you'll start to figure it out more and be influenced by a ton of tangential but also important stuff like the quality of mentoring you get from different PIs. I'm just saying you might want to know ahead of time whether you're interested in research that has implications for human health and disease, or maybe you just want to do science for the sake of science....etc, etc.