How much of my work experience can I reasonably label as research?

[snoozyk]

I’m a non-trad who has been working in healthcare since 2016 (similar to a nuclear medicine tech). About a year ago, I decided to go the premed route and received tons of support from my physicist and physician colleagues. The specialty I work in is very research heavy, so I was given the opportunity to work on many different (related) projects.

This has mainly included data entry into a database that I design and maintain, image registration, consenting patients for research, and contributing to papers/posters. I’ve also written a case study and am participating as a task force member on a safety white paper for a novel imaging technique.

I am just unsure how much of this experience I should count as research. For example, if I applied with 14,000 hours of clinical experience, could I take 1,000 out and count it as research? I’m finding it difficult to quantify how much I’ve done because I’ll often work on these projects sporadically during downtime between patients. Very rarely I’ll get a half or full day to work on them. Some weeks I’ll only get an hour or two.

I won’t have any first author pubs due to other commitments but I believe I can speak passionately and at length about these projects. I just want to make sure I’m reporting hours honestly while also not making it seem ridiculous that I got 5 papers and a poster somehow in only a few hundred hours.

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[Mr.Smile12]

What is your job description? Is it classified as staff employee not involved with research, or is it classified as research staff support? What is the source of your salary?

 

[snoozyk]

What is your job description? Is it classified as staff employee not involved with research, or is it classified as research staff support? What is the source of your salary?

Staff employee - I get paid by the hospital system. Research isn’t technically part of my job description.

 

[LizzyM]

You can, of course, list the posters and papers on which you are an author. That gets a separate entry on the application and you can list 999 hours to say that it is a large number that can't be quantified.

You can include in the job description (paid employment, clinical) that you have responsibility for maintenance of a clinical database used for research (data entry is pretty low in the research hierarchy-- no one will be impressed). You can list the other responsibilities that you have that contribute to the research enterprise of your (academic?) medical center.

But you don't have research experience and it doesn't sound as if you are conducting systematic observations intended to generate new knowledge (a definition of research).

 

[snoozyk]

You can, of course, list the posters and papers on which you are an author. That gets a separate entry on the application and you can list 999 hours to say that it is a large number that can't be quantified.

You can include in the job description (paid employment, clinical) that you have responsibility for maintenance of a clinical database used for research (data entry is pretty low in the research hierarchy-- no one will be impressed). You can list the other responsibilities that you have that contribute to the research enterprise of your (academic?) medical center.

But you don't have research experience and it doesn't sound as if you are conducting systematic observations intended to generate new knowledge (a definition of research).

Ok thank you! Just to clarify, it’s okay to have papers without research experience then?

 

[LizzyM]

Ok thank you! Just to clarify, it’s okay to have papers without research experience then?

If you have published something on the basis of paid work experience, you can use the publication tag to show the publication(s) and tag your employment as employment rather than "research" which can be paid or unpaid.

 

[snoozyk]

Just wanted to update and see if it changes anything with applications coming up. Since posting this, I expressed an interest in getting more involved and it really took off. I now have experience with data analysis, and just had an abstract selected for an oral presentation at a large national conference.

I am just worried about fitting all of this in the activity description for my clinical job. Since I was listed as a research assistant on the IRB documents, would it be okay to list myself as such and make this its own activity?

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Just wanted to update and see if it changes anything with applications coming up. Since posting this, I expressed an interest in getting more involved and it really took off. I now have experience with data analysis, and just had an abstract selected for an oral presentation at a large national conference.

I am just worried about fitting all of this in the activity description for my clinical job. Since I was listed as a research assistant on the IRB documents, would it be okay to list myself as such and make this its own activity?

I don't think it changes anything that @LizzyM said at first blush.