I am a very anxious person. Currently in year 2 out of 3 in heme-onc fellowship at a large academic center. Recent feedback as not been stellar, mainly citing that I need to be more productive in terms of my research time. My clinical feedback is fine. The bulk of out inpatient duties were during first year of fellowship and I completed that without issues. However, this year and next year is a mix between outpatient clinic and research, and we are expected to produce during our research time, which I haven't been. I don't desire to go into academic medicine and want to just work in private practice or in a community hospital setting upon graduation. However, the history of the program has been producing assistant professors in disease-specific areas. I may be overthinking and scaring myself, but is there a possibility my program will hold me back from graduating or perhaps even fire me if I am not able to come up with any research results?
Has anyone ever gotten held back or fired during fellowship?
- Thread starter Syndicate
- Start date
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2004
- Messages
- 6,007
- Reaction score
- 6,711
So…come up with some research? Or at least find the most productive researcher and ask if you can get on something already that exists that will get you a paper or at least a couple of posters at a national conference.
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2019
- Messages
- 1,045
- Reaction score
- 1,825
I would imagine you need to at least do a project that some academic mentor can put their name on.
Did you rank this program highly? Hopefully this can be a lesson for others, you should really think about your career goals and not the prestige of a program when it comes to your final step of training.
Did you rank this program highly? Hopefully this can be a lesson for others, you should really think about your career goals and not the prestige of a program when it comes to your final step of training.
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2008
- Messages
- 2,356
- Reaction score
- 2,333
My rheumatology fellowship was like this - “prestigious”, very academic, very high pressure, and research was pushed very hard. I did 5 posters at ACR my second year (?!), one of my co-fellows did 3, and throughout we were all pushed to publish as many other articles as we possibly could in the “spare time” we had (which was actually nonexistent, but I digress).
Remember, however, that unless you’re a “research pathway” fellow or something, this is primarily a clinical fellowship. To satisfy ACGME requirements, all you have to do is to have participated in a research project (iirc you don’t have to publish anything, or even generate a poster - correct me if I’m wrong). I definitely heard attendings grumbling at my program about fellows they thought were “less productive”, but ultimately those fellows did their project, did a poster, and got through. Some folks even had projects that got ****ed up for one reason or another, and as long as they put in a good faith effort they got through. As long as you put a good faith effort into the research you’re doing, they can’t hold you back because the project doesn’t work out for some reason (this happens quite often in research, after all). That’s not in line with the ACGME regulations.
If you have dedicated research time, however, it may be very important to your attendings that you look productive. You’ve already admitted that you aren’t very enthusiastic about research (I wasn’t either), but if you’re supposed to be doing research and you’re actually leaving early and not really doing anything, that might be what the problem is.
Keep calm, carry on, and publish some bull**** if you must. (After all, that’s what most of your colleagues are actually doing anyway.) Glom onto someone else’s project if necessary; my friends at the less academic program across town shared one poster project between four fellows just to check the box and be done. Just know that once you’re out and in community practice, nobody will basically ever give a damn about all this ever again.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2008
- Messages
- 1,326
- Reaction score
- 2,092
So what are you doing with your protected research time?
Leaving early?
You may not want an academic career, which is fine, but if you have dedicated research time, it's very reasonable for the program to want some results.
Most of the stuff fellows publish is low hanging fruit anyways. It's easy to get some retrospective studies published.
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2013
- Messages
- 5,560
- Reaction score
- 6,642
Tell them the pressure of research is having a negative effect on your mental health. It'll make them back off. As long as you have your one project (eg, case report) and your QI, they shouldn't be able to hold you back
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2011
- Messages
- 931
- Reaction score
- 333
It’s a checkbox requirement, no matter what they say. Get a review or some retrospective analysis done, check.
In my second year of heme/onc fellowship, I was told I wasn’t producing in terms of research
In my third year of heme/onc fellowship, after one review, one abstract, and (count ‘em) THREE rejected grant applications, I was told I was “aspirational” in my research accomplishments.
[extremely rude gesticulation]
In my second year of heme/onc fellowship, I was told I wasn’t producing in terms of research
In my third year of heme/onc fellowship, after one review, one abstract, and (count ‘em) THREE rejected grant applications, I was told I was “aspirational” in my research accomplishments.
[extremely rude gesticulation]
Similar threads
