PM&R Research

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Triathlon

Triathlon

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Third year. I need some guidance. How do I do research? I have no idea what to do. I don't know of anybody doing research and I am really not interested in working in a lab with crazy enzymes or genes that no one has ever heard of. I would really like to do some physical medicine research. If any of you have done this, what did you do and how did you begin (ie contacted so and so)?
I plan on taking a month off during fourth year for this.
Thanks.
 
Triathlon said:
Third year. I need some guidance. How do I do research? I have no idea what to do. I don't know of anybody doing research and I am really not interested in working in a lab with crazy enzymes or genes that no one has ever heard of. I would really like to do some physical medicine research. If any of you have done this, what did you do and how did you begin (ie contacted so and so)?
I plan on taking a month off during fourth year for this.
Thanks.
Click to expand...

Depends on where you are located - either at your med school or near your home town. If there is a PM&R department, you should be able to find someone doing research. I don't know if one month is enough for most research but you may be able to write up a case report or do a chart review in a month.
 
Kansas City. Does anybody have any contacts they could share?
 
Kansas City. Does anybody have any contacts they could share?

Based on your screenname, I am guessing that you involved in athletics. The best sports medicine rehabilitation physician in Missouri is probably Heidi Prather, at Washington University in St. Louis. She is outstanding. I don't know anyone in Kansas City.
 
If you only have a month in fourth year, you are correct to ask now about research. Many medical school IRB's take at least 4-8 wks to process an IRB request and it could be longer if they have HIPAA privacy concerns.
If you want to do clinical research in a month, it would have to be a very small crosssectional study, a retrospective clinic study (I had an undergraduate student do data collection on patients with one physical therapist over 4 years and it took him 3 months to enter data) using existing clinic data you have to enter, or use an existing database. Do NOT do a prospective study that requires subjects to be seen at two points in time. It will be doomed to failure due to the insufficient subjects due to the small number of subjects you will have.
Looking at the internet, the University of Missouri at KC does not have a PM&R department, but there is an orthopedic sports medicine program. Consider contacting him to see if he would be willing to work with you or if a fellow is doing a research project you could help on.
Jon E. Browne, M.D.
Director, Orthopaedic Sports Medicine Fellowship Program
University of Missouri-Kansas City

The Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences website has almost no information. However, it does list they have a residency in orthopedic surgery and a fellowship in sports medicine (nothing about PM&R). You could try cold calling them also.


If you are an avid runner, swimmer, cycler, do you know of any medical concerns that are unanswered in those areas that you could easily study?
Good luck
 
Thanks, I am very interested in sports medicine. Mostly adaptive sports medicine. I would really like to adress issues involving adaptive sports and possible development of outdoor sporting equipment. I know that isn't too academic but relevent to the patients I plan on treating in the future. I will look into the orthopaedic programs around here as well as trying to find someone in the PM&R program locally.
 
If you have any current ideas for an adaptive outdoor sporting equipment, that could be field tested during your research month, that would be a great research project that could possibly be feasibly done in a month. You would need to do much legwork with respect to 1) developing a prototype to test, 2) identifynig athletes to test it out 3)develop an evaluation tool to measure what outcomes you are interested in (e.g. 5 point likert sacle), 4) hopefully be able to quickly make new versions to retest in the same month if you only have one month of research.

I know you are doing this for altruism, but if you develop new equipment, you should look into your medical school's rules regarding patents. Where I am, I think students retain all patent rights, should you decide to pursue a patent. You may feel uncomfortable doing this since you are currently trying to find a mentor willing to work with you, but if your ideas could make money, you need to decide early on with the mentor how to divide the patent rights (could cost several thousands of dollars). If you don't think it will make money or have no interest in patenting it, then you can let it go. However, understand that for any company to want to mass produce any product there must be a financial gain (or at least break-even for nonprofits unless you get a large endowment)

Doing all these things in medical school (developing an equipment, testing it with a research project, getting a patent (this could look great, but could also make you appear to be greedy to the "academic physician not familiar with patent issues")) would look great on your CV.

If you are interested in sports medicine, keep in mind Mayo Clinic which has a great PM&R outpatient sports medicine program or Michigan State University fellowhsip. Unfortunately I am not familiar with programs that work with adaptive sports teams.

Unfortunately I have to work on a manuscript resubmission and data analysis for another paper so I will only check this site sporadically. 🙂
 
This is all good information that I will use. I will work on it and post my progress. Could be a while but I have some ideas.
 
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