Incoming M1 interested in Gen surg

[Trollest]

Well, i am actually interested in both Gen surg and family medicine.

So before starting medical school, i wanted to work in a lab at the school i graduating from but was wondering which field would be more beneficial : Genetic, lymph, pancreatic, infectious disease, etc..

I am planning on spending at least 3 month in a lab prior starting med school.

Thanks

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[witzelsucht]

whichever one gets you published

 

[Trollest]

whichever one gets you published

Chances of getting published in 3 month are kind of low, but i will try to join a physiology lab again. Worked with the PI in the past, so hopefully it wil work.

 

[Dr.LeoSpaceman]

You're right. You won't get a publication in 3 months. So the best experience at this point is one that develops your network. You wount need research for FM, so if you have an option to work with a surgeon-run lab, or a lab that regularly collaborates with a surgeon(s), that would actually be the best move. Gives you an in for opportunities down the road.

 

[Trollest]

You're right. You won't get a publication in 3 months. So the best experience at this point is one that develops your network. You wount need research for FM, so if you have an option to work with a surgeon-run lab, or a lab that regularly collaborates with a surgeon(s), that would actually be the best move. Gives you an in for opportunities down the road.

Thanks and will do. Need to start contacting them next week.

 

[Osteoth]

Well, i am actually interested in both Gen surg and family medicine.

So before starting medical school, i wanted to work in a lab at the school i graduating from but was wondering which field would be more beneficial : Genetic, lymph, pancreatic, infectious disease, etc..

I am planning on spending at least 3 month in a lab prior starting med school.

Thanks

Why spend time in the lab and not instead get involved in clinical research?

 

[Trollest]

Why spend time in the lab and not instead get involved in clinical research?

Thanks for letting me know that clinical research is better than bench side. As stated, I will start med school this August, thus had no idea that clinical research was better. Question though, do you think I can get a clinical research job as a pre-med; because I am still one until July.

 

[Osteoth]

Thanks for letting me know that clinical research is better than bench side. As stated, I will start med school this August, thus had no idea that clinical research was better. Question though, do you think I can get a clinical research job as a pre-med; because I am still one until July.

I'm not saying it's necessarily "better", but in general clinical research is much quicker to get published, and in my experience with research in med school you have a very limited amount of time to "be productive" as everyone is going to tell you, so getting your name on things is significantly more impressive than being part of a project that is still in progress.

The reason for this is that if you end up going to an academic residency, they want to know that you have experience pushing papers through, and that is much more dependent on your experience writing and submitting than it is being the automaton that pipettes until oblivion.

My recommendation in terms of getting involved in research in the summer before M1 would be to go shadow a surgeon that you have interest in their specialty. Build a personal relationship with them and eventually research will come up. If you can get involved with them now it'll be significantly easier to pop in once a month or so during your M1 year and keep getting fed papers. Almost as important as this is to get to know the residents, especially the ones on the academic path, because they're going to need people to do scut for them on their papers, and those are often fruitful for you in terms of hours committed relative to publication likelihood.

Having 5 months is nice because its enough time to build connections in a relative stress free manner. I'd recommend starting out 1-2x a week and feeling everything out from there.

 

[Trollest]

I'm not saying it's necessarily "better", but in general clinical research is much quicker to get published, and in my experience with research in med school you have a very limited amount of time to "be productive" as everyone is going to tell you, so getting your name on things is significantly more impressive than being part of a project that is still in progress.

The reason for this is that if you end up going to an academic residency, they want to know that you have experience pushing papers through, and that is much more dependent on your experience writing and submitting than it is being the automaton that pipettes until oblivion.

My recommendation in terms of getting involved in research in the summer before M1 would be to go shadow a surgeon that you have interest in their specialty. Build a personal relationship with them and eventually research will come up. If you can get involved with them now it'll be significantly easier to pop in once a month or so during your M1 year and keep getting fed papers. Almost as important as this is to get to know the residents, especially the ones on the academic path, because they're going to need people to do scut for them on their papers, and those are often fruitful for you in terms of hours committed relative to publication likelihood.

Having 5 months is nice because its enough time to build connections in a relative stress free manner. I'd recommend starting out 1-2x a week and feeling everything out from there.

Great! the school i got into has lot of shadowing opportunities for thier student. So, i will contact the UT physicains group/organization next week, def before wednesday and i will let you know how it went.

 

[Osteoth]

Great! the school i got into has lot of shadowing opportunities for thier student. So, i will contact the UT physicains group/organization next week, def before wednesday and i will let you know how it went.

Don't do that, just find the emails of doctors through your school's website and email them directly. Wait 1 week if no response then call their secretaries and ask about shadowing if you're really committed to that one guy. When you're interacting with these guys you have to think about the fact that they might become your mentors in the long-term, so their ability to effectively and efficiently communicate with you can be exceedingly important. You want someone who's a full professor so they have a certain level of clout, but not someone who's on the door to retirement because they will have less grinding that they need you for. Your biggest role for these guys is basically gopher, its like going golfing with your dad when you're 12, you're going to caddy for the most part, but every once in a while they're gonna need a 4th and you get to play aka you get a paper or get to go to a conference. Sadly/truthfully, you have very little to offer them besides a worker that can do the same work as any other medical student, so really just smile and do whatever they want you to do. Also, make the ancillary staff like you and it'll help.

Also, one thing you need to learn early is that the more levels of bureaucracy you have to get through in order to get what you want, the longer something will take and the lower the chance you actually get it. Most of the time I have had a problem in school just showing up at the office of the person who can fix the problem works better than innumerable calls/emails. These people are busy.

 

[Trollest]

Don't do that, just find the emails of doctors through your school's website and email them directly. Wait 1 week if no response then call their secretaries and ask about shadowing if you're really committed to that one guy. When you're interacting with these guys you have to think about the fact that they might become your mentors in the long-term, so their ability to effectively and efficiently communicate with you can be exceedingly important. You want someone who's a full professor so they have a certain level of clout, but not someone who's on the door to retirement because they will have less grinding that they need you for. Your biggest role for these guys is basically gopher, its like going golfing with your dad when you're 12, you're going to caddy for the most part, but every once in a while they're gonna need a 4th and you get to play aka you get a paper or get to go to a conference. Sadly/truthfully, you have very little to offer them besides a worker that can do the same work as any other medical student, so really just smile and do whatever they want you to do. Also, make the ancillary staff like you and it'll help.

Also, one thing you need to learn early is that the more levels of bureaucracy you have to get through in order to get what you want, the longer something will take and the lower the chance you actually get it. Most of the time I have had a problem in school just showing up at the office of the person who can fix the problem works better than innumerable calls/emails. These people are busy.

Oh totally make sense. Well, i will definetly do that. Will update the thread in two weeks then.

 

[neriticzone]

Not sure if this is the best way to go about it, but my general MO for getting research opportunities is to keep emailing people who are active (can use NIH Reporter/PubMed to screen) and try to set up physical meetings to talk to them about their work. You really do have to be persistent though.