Finding research in med school as compared to undergrad

[confusedpremed12345]

Hi All,

I was wondering if someone could give some guidance on how to go about finding research in medical school as compared to undergrad. I am a rising M1, and ideally, I would like to start this work now so that when I am in school I can just do a little bit each day and focus on my classes. I am specifically looking for things like chart reviews and case studies, which I have heard from current medical students to be less time-consuming and easy to publish. Is cold emailing acceptable? Can I do this with professors outside of my school? What time commitment can I expect? Does anyone have an email example?

Sincerely,

A soon to be M1

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[21Rush12]

Hi!

Med school is much easier to find research. In third year case reports come up all the time, I had more than I could handle.

Starting in M1 you could email or ask professors for ideas. Just don’t bite off more than you can chew. It should not be hard to find things to work on. If you have a field of interest just email someone in that department and say you’re interested in working on case reports or helping with any ongoing research.

A word of cautionary advice: make sure you outline what your contribution will be and what credit you will get for it. Set this out clearly to be fair to you and your PI. Don’t take on something that will take years to finish unless you really want to be invested. You can get poster presentations and things to boost your CV without starting from scratch. Case reports are a good way to get both poster and publication without months of work. Sure it’s great to be with a project from day 0 writing the IRB, but this has to be something you can publish or present before ERAS submission and things take a long time sometimes. Often you will be waiting on other people (i.e. busy attendings) to finish projects and it’s a long wait time even when your contribution is complete.

Overall don’t stress. I avoided research until mid-M2 year and I’m now up to my eyeballs in different things and having to say no to cases because I can’t take on any more. If you look and are active you’ll have no issues.

 

[mrbreakfast]

Above advice is solid. You can get in on projects from joining interest groups (e.g. surgery interest group) or by keeping a proverbial ear to the ground. Cold emailing IS acceptable, as is talking to a secretary or something in the subspeciality of interest (e.g. if you want to do ortho research, talk to the ortho secretary, who can direct you to the ortho research coordinator, etc)

I actually think M1 is the perfect time to start research, after you've been a student for a few months and are doing well in classes. Coursework comes before research. However, you have plenty of time in M1 and will have time to travel to conferences if you want.

I got in on a research group early in M1 and the core group (me and 4 classmates) published a sum of probably two dozen papers over 4 years. You can get a lot done. However:
-For a paper, you may be looking at several hours/week for months. Be ready. I'd estimate 75% of students who start a project don't finish. On the flip side, you can easily take over someone else's project.
-Actually do work, and do good work. People would ask if they could get in on a project, would do a tiny fraction of what we assigned them, then complain when they weren't listed on the final paper. Or they'd write a paper intro like "X is important in medicine and is undergoing ongoing research. Here's a project we did looking into that" and expect us to actually use that as an intro to a 30 page paper. Etc.
-As mentioned above, avoid anything that isn't already IRB-approved. I ended up writing several IRB proposals and one project took a year to get approval.
-Data collection from charts is time-consuming but is a sure-fire way to get listed on a paper.
-It's my personal opinion that med students should not do bench research, even over the summer.

 

[confusedpremed12345]

Thanks so much to both of you! This is really helpful for me.

 

[LyMed]

You can also try directly emailing residents. Make sure you prioritize your classes and STEP before research, however.

 

[21Rush12]

You can also try directly emailing residents. Make sure you prioritize your classes and STEP before research, however.

Absolutely this too. That’s why I’d recommend starting with smaller things (case reports etc) until you have your feet under you and are secure in your schedule.

 

[Sleepingdoc]

Med school and research are very different things.. Like the above poster said, do not prioritize research during med school. In my opinion, I went to med school to become a doc.. not a researcher.