How Important Is Research for Residency? (My Experience Publishing 20+ Papers)

[Bigdatasurgery]

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Hey everyone, I wanted to share my experience and get thoughts on something I’ve been wondering about.

I’m a PGY-2 in general surgery, and over the past year, I’ve published more than 20 papers—most in Q1 journals—many of them with medical students.

I know that for competitive specialties like ortho, derm, and plastics, research is basically mandatory. But what about other fields like IM, anesthesia, and general surgery?

In my experience, a lot of med students struggle with getting into research because:

Their med school doesn’t have strong research support.

They don’t know how to find good projects.

They don’t have access to big datasets (like NIS, NRD).


From what I’ve seen, students who get a few solid publications seem to have a huge advantage in the match, especially IMGs.

Curious to hear from others—how did you get your research done? Do you think it actually made a difference in your residency apps?

 

[AJS59]

I'd also like to know the value in research outside of the specialty you ultimately apply to

 

[Nontrad_FL_LGBT]

Aren't you the guy that was trying to sell pubs to med students?

 

[xDNA]

Getting research and getting research in your specialty of interest are two different things. I could be naive but I'd imagine getting research at any med school is attainable, getting research in your specialty interest could be more difficult based on several reasons. To preface this, I do go to a more prestigious school, but from what I've noticed with my classmates is that the ones who struggle with research are the ones who kinda wait for things to fall in their lap instead of being outgoing and taking initiative with finding or starting a project. My friends who plan on applying IM or anesthesia have little to no research. I got my research by emailing people in the department. I was lucky and was able to find a mentor who was relatively new at our school, and he gave me the reins on several projects allowing me to submit multiple 1st author projects.