MD PhDs who split their time between clinical & research, how have you integrated them so that it doesn’t just feel like working two separate jobs?

[Glutenlover1948]

Hi all, just to elaborate on the question above, it almost feels like it’s hard to be entirely focused on one goal without “min-maxing” 100-0 either clinical or research, but ideally the whole goal of this degree is to have a combination of both.

How have you combined both research and clinical into your career so that you don’t feel like a jack of all trades, splitting your time between two paths?

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[SeisK]

Choose your specialty such that your PhD background can influence pushing the clinical science in that field more. E.g. fMRI research is useful in radiology, psychiatry, and neurology. Biomedical engineering is great in radonc, radiology, and various surgical subspecialties depending on what you focus in. Cancer research Is useful in IM, surg-onc (of all specialties), radonc, and radiology.

When you get up to MS3, you’ll find ways where the research you’re doing could be seen as pushing the envelope of a specialty that works on some set of diseases/treatment regimens, and you’ll likely be more interested in that path because of your background anyway.

That way, you can imagine spending half your time treating patients with a certain disease or with a certain treatment regimen, and the other half you’re doing research on advancing one particular aspect of that treatment/diagnostic modality.

 

[Neuronix]

You try to see the patients or studies (pathology, radiology) with the diseases that you're researching. It's as simple as that.