Medical How does it look for a DR applicant to have a non-Rads research year? Question for DR Interviewers

[TheBoneDoctah]

Hi all,

Hope you have been well. I'm in a unique situation-- I finished M3 year 6 months ago and I'm currently on a research year (RY) in an Internal Medicine subspecialty. But, I'm applying to DR next year. 1 year ago when I applied for the RY, I was undecided specialty-wise (I was considering IM, DR, some others). At the time I knew I wanted to get significant research experience, and I thought IM research would be helpful in any specialty's application- although I know it's not as useful as specialty-specific research. But in the past 3 months I decided to apply to DR.

My RY is going okay so far- on track to be an average research year. But the "atypical" thing about my app is that RYs are uncommon for DR, especially an IM RY. Otherwise, my app is average for DR and has no red flags. I want to go to an academic DR residency.

I have a couple questions- overall, I'm wondering how this situation will look to DR interviewers/PDs. I know that DR doesn't value research as heavily as some other specialties. My main concern is that they see my IM research year as bad in some way, maybe showing lack of interest in DR or indecisiveness.

1. Has anyone heard of a similar situation?

2. To improve my DR-specific productivity and show interest: if I do DR research, (let's say 3-4 case reports before ERAS), outside of my IM research, would a Rads PD add this into their judgment of my RY productivity? Because maybe then I could go from an average level of productivity (only based on IM research) to a slightly above average level. And this would also show interest in DR.

3. Since my PI is an IM doc-- would a DR program think less of that Letter of Rec? Since RYs generally require a Research LOR from the PI which will be included in ERAS.

Thank you all for your help!

You will be fine. DR research is better than IM research, but IM research is better than no research. If you can add in some rads specific things that would be good. Your situation will be easy to explain in your application and interviews.

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[TheBoneDoctah]

Thank you for your help! I have another quick Q related to #2:

Would a PD judge my RY productivity based on the overall amount of research I produce in the year? Or only on the the research I produce at my main institution?

I think the answer is almost definitely the former-- just want to make sure that if I do part-time DR research with a different doc (at an institution separate from my research year location) that a residency PD will still consider this a contribution to my RY productivity. That is, I may only be doing an average amount of IM research, but that's because I'm also doing DR research.... Thank you very much!

Pretty sure it would be the overall amount of research you produced. When you apply, they will see your list of publications/research activities and you can go through and explain what you did. You can explain that during your research year you worked on both IM research and DR research and that your interests changed which is why you did the IM RY.