How long does it take to complete clinical research w/ pub?

[indya]

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Hey,
I was wondering how long it usually takes to complete clinical research with a publication. I have been invited to do some this summer with a physician who is really active in clinical research, and I was wondering if you think I could get one publication by the end of the summer. Note: I have little to do this summer as it will be the summer before college, so I can devote a lot of time to this. The research would be in general surgery, probably just chart reviews.

 

[MSTPlease]

"Clinical Research" is a really broad field, and so it's impossible to really give you an answer. For example, one summer I was doing data analysis for a clinical trial that had just completed. It was essentially a retrospective cohort study looking at risks that existed pre trial and looking to see what exposures best predicted disease since the drug used in the trial was useless. I got 2 papers out of that. The trial itself lasted several years, so the one paper about whether or not the drug was effective took 6 years to get out from when the study started, let alone when the planning begun.

 

[bd4727]

As the above poster said, it depends on what you are doing. "Chart reviews" could mean a number of things: if it is going to be a case-series, then that can be done very quickly (like 1 month). If you are doing some sort of retrospective case/control or cohort analysis, that can also be done fairly quickly but will take a bit more time, and you might have to get an IRB approval. If you are getting involved in a project that is ongoing (either a natural history study or an interventional study), these things are usually on the order of years from the time the idea is conceived until the paper is submitted.