EE phd considering med school

[nijmcnij]

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[RxnMan]

...My concentration is in integrated circuit design. I am extremely excited about the prospects of a career change to academic medicine. I see myself in one of the surgical specialties (ortho or plastics)...

Obvious other choices are neuro and neurosurgery. Non-obvious choices that actually have circuit design applications: physical medicine and rehab. Prosthetics design and gait analysis use EE skills. 👍

...nobody mentioned cases related to electrical engineering Phds...

I would expect that the greatest challenge is PhD -> MD, and that the effect of the specific type of PhD is a couple orders of less of an effect.

...By the time I'll be done with the Phd, I'll be 29/30 yrs old, is this an acceptable age for people in my situation?...

Age is not as much of a hinderance as in previous decades. A lot of 'non-traditional' students join every class. You have a good 'excuse' (doing a PhD) for the time between now and when you graduated ugrad (bad excuse: ski bum for 6 years).

The challenge with any non-trad is answering the question: "Why now?" A good application will do that (in the above ski bum case, they could say "I helped kids with disabilities on the slopes, and it was the most enriching experience of my life. I want to help them in a more concrete and lasting way, i.e. as their physician").

...apart from changing research concentration which really is contingent on funding and is none Bio related?...

Would it be good to throw some medicine (not bio, different things) into your thesis project? Sure. Will it help you emphasize the transition to medicine, and help you have something to write application essays about? Of course. But you don't need to switch your focus. If you've got a good thing going with funding, don't screw that up! It's too rare, especially if you're getting good results. At most, give it a medical app spin in one area, and play that up.

...(at the risk of sounding arrogant 😀......arguably the toughest engineering discipline)...

You just say that 'cause you never saw what the ChemE's go through (I'm kidding too).

 

[QofQuimica]

currently, I am doing my phd in electrical engineering at a mid ranked state schools (top 30 in EE). My concentration is in integrated circuit design. I am extremely excited about the prospects of a career change to academic medicine. I see myself in one of the surgical specialties (ortho or plastics)....

It's great to have an idea of what you want to do, but try to keep an open mind. This is especially important if you haven't had much exposure to medicine so far.

After reading the postings on the medical scientists forum, I got kind off mixed emotions about engineering phds (especially engineering disciplines other than BM). I guess my question is would my EE phd put me ahead of the pack (med school admissions and later on residencies)?.

No. Having high *college* grades (ideally 3.8+ but hopefully at least 3.5+), a stellar MCAT score (ideally 33+ but hopefully at least 30+), a consistent history of community service over a period of years, significant health care experience of some kind, stellar LORs that say you are some kind of cross between Mother Theresa and Einstein, well-crafted PS essays, and being someone who is articulate and likable in person are the things that will make you stand out. Basically, your PhD is like a nice EC. No one really cares all that much whether it is in EE or English, though I'm sure it would come up at interviews and in adcom meetings if you had an English PhD!

I read what QofQuimica and others had to say, but in all that, nobody mentioned cases related to electrical engineering Phds (at the risk of sounding arrogant 😀......arguably the toughest engineering discipline).

Usually when people talk about how tough their major was, they're trying to excuse subpar grades. I hope that's not your case, b/c you won't get any slack just because the subpar grades were in engineering. And actually, yes, if you possibly can, you *should* stop thinking like that (or at least stop admitting that you think like that). It doesn't just sound arrogant; it *is* arrogant. Granted that not everyone has the skill set (math background, etc.) needed to get an EE degree. But then again, I would wager that plenty of EEs who are extremely bright didn't do so hot in their English courses, either. Most of us aren't equally brilliant at everything. So, take it as the gospel that PhD programs in general are hard. It took me three tries to finish mine in the "easy" field of experimental organic chemistry, but I'm just glad that I wasn't one of the 50% who dropped out of my program without finishing altogether. 🙂

By the time I'll be done with the Phd, I'll be 29/30 yrs old, is this an acceptable age for people in my situation?

Good grief, you wouldn't make the top 10% of oldest students in my class. My school doesn't even count you as nontrad if you're under 30. There are students in their 40s in med school, and even an occasional one in their 50s. This is a long-winded way of saying that yes, your age would be perfectly acceptable. 😉

Also, is there any particular advises i should be following now in order to maximize my chances of getting into med school, things that i should be doing now while at school, apart from changing research concentration which really is contingent on funding and is none Bio related?

1) You sound like you might be foreign grad. Did you go to college in the US or Canada? If not, you need to talk to someone about getting your college work recognized for AMCAS purposes. PM ScottishChap; he's another international PhD-to-MD who can help you with this.

2) How well-rounded were you as a college and grad student? Unlike many other countries, in the US, the medical admissions process is not only (or even primarily) driven by scores on the MCAT. You could have a perfect MCAT score/GPA and still find doors being slammed in your face right and left if you lack community service and health care field exposure.

3) I don't think it matters that your PhD work doesn't relate to medicine (mine didn't either). But you might want to look into doing some clinical research on the side. If your school has a med school and there are any MD/PhDs in the surgery deptartments, email them and see if you could do a case report or some other kind of data analysis for a retrospective study. That will probably be a cinch for someone with your background, and having an extra pub or two won't hurt. It will give you an idea of whether you even like doing that kind of work. Plus, it will be healthcare related, which can only help you.

Other thoughts:

Bear in mind that medical school is very unlike grad school. In grad school, you are rewarded for single-mindedly focusing on one subject for a long time. Medical school is a lot shallower and broader. You won't have the opportunity to delve deeply into anything while you're in med school.

I think a lot of PhDs wrongly expect med school to be kind of like grad school, where you are rewarded for independent thought and new ideas. Just FYI, it's nothing like that. In med school, you are rewarded for your ability to memorize many tons of crap for the first two years, and you are rewarded for your ability to be a team player and get along with people for the last two years. (This basically means that you do a lot of scut work, and you pay for the privilege of doing it.) Medicine is a hierarchy. You'll be starting all over again as a freshman, working your way up through school, then again through residency. You should seriously consider whether, after all of your hard work to get a PhD, you're ready to start from scratch as a freshman again. I won't pull punches with you: it's very stressful, and it's not nearly as much fun as grad school. If you expect that you will be treated differently in med school because you have a PhD, boy, you are really going to have four of the most miserable years you can possibly imagine....

If I'm sounding negative about going to med school, I'm doing it on purpose. That's not to say that it can't or shouldn't be done if a medical degree would help you in your career aspirations. But you will have to jump through a lot of hoops that you know are ridiculous, and you will have to do it with a smile on your face. You should think about how important getting an MD really is to you, and how much time and effort you're willing to sacrifice to get one. If I haven't managed to talk you out of doing this yet, well, start getting your stuff together so that you can be a competitive applicant and see where it takes you.

Best of luck to you. 🙂

 

[RxnMan]

...I think a lot of PhDs wrongly expect med school to be kind of like grad school, where you are rewarded for independent thought and new ideas. Just FYI, it's nothing like that. In med school, you are rewarded for your ability to memorize many tons of crap for the first two years, and you are rewarded for your ability to be a team player and get along with people for the last two years...

I have to second this. I have been doing independent research as a "hobby" during med school because it's the only time where my thoughts and thought process are valued. Frequently during clinicals you will be asked to play "read the mind of the attending/resident."

Case in point:
I'm on a new service, and after rounds and we're done with work, I see that the resident gave PPI's to all of the patients, regardless of c/c. On my old service, the attending took everyone off PPI's unless they had a direct indication for them, as PPI's reduce the sterilizing ability of the stomach and increase the pt's likelihood of getting hospital-acquired infections like C.Diff. I asked the resident what her reasoning was. She says:

Resident: Gastric prophylaxis
Me: But what about (I explained my attending's thoughts)
Resident: (blank stare...for a minute...I thought she was having an absence seizure! ) Uhh...it's for gastric prophylaxis.
Me: Ok, but could you explain why you decided to give PPI's to these pts, but how they were inappropriate for pts on my other service
Resident: There's, like, a journal article somewhere.
Me: Great - can you tell me about the article (author, title, something) so I can look it up?
Resident: I don't remember it.

You get a lot of people who retreat into being walking and talking tape recorders. 🙄

I would argue against it not being as much fun as grad school - really, both are stressful/fun in their own ways. Grad school - more free time and ability to change your schedule, vs. never knowing if your thesis will be done/funded/acceptable to all of the committee members, never getting results.

MD: no independent thought, all memorization, hierarchy, always in an unfamiliar environment, vs. helping people, generally fun people to work with, diversity of work.

 

[QofQuimica]

I would argue against it not being as much fun as grad school - really, both are stressful/fun in their own ways. Grad school - more free time and ability to change your schedule, vs. never knowing if your thesis will be done/funded/acceptable to all of the committee members, never getting results.

MD: no independent thought, all memorization, hierarchy, always in an unfamiliar environment, vs. helping people, generally fun people to work with, diversity of work.

Of course there are some upsides to med school too. I do really enjoy seeing patients, much more than I had expected. I like doing procedures. Of course there is plenty of tedium in research, and the uncertainty can be stressful, too. But the complete lack of control over my schedule this year really chafes me. It feels like being in elementary school sometimes, where you have to get permission just to go take a pee. I've become much more passive-aggressive, doing things like sneaking away when my attending is distracted to wolf down lunch at 3 PM after having had nothing to eat for eleven hours. (I still don't understand how surgeons can keep up this kind of schedule for a whole career. No wonder they're all so d*** cranky all the time.) Or I go to the library to read and take a nap in some hidden corner for half an hour (I've caught a lot of the residents doing that too ). It gets easier with time as you learn to adapt and you go into what my advisor calls survival mode. Well, at least until you start all over with a new team on a new rotation at a new hospital where you don't know how anything works. 🙄

I dunno, maybe I'm just more of a control freak than you are, RxnMan. 😛

 

[dl2dp2]

there are a couple of things you might want to consider

(1) If you practice in surgical specialties, and medicine at large, most of your background is ESSENTIALLY useless. You basically wasted ~ 10 years of your life doing something that you'll never use again for the rest of your life. If you are okay with this, then that's fine.

(2) Having a PhD MAY help you during residency application, though I am not sure if this is only applicable if you are a MSTP.

(3) Your skills would be useful for certain specialties if you do ACADEMIC medicine. However, academic medicine is very different from private practice. And since you are not in a bio sci related field you might not be aware of the perils in this pathway. EE departments generally don't rely on extramural funding for budgets, and grant writing is not the primary consideration. Medical schools research is VERY VERY different.

 

[nijmcnij]

thank you all for your comments