Research as a career -- how does it work?

[Revilla]

I'm not considering it because I love clinical medicine, but I'm just curious. If you get your MD/PhD or just your MD with hopes of doing research, when you get out, do you forego residency if you don't plan to do any clinical medicine? Do you do a research fellowship or are there residencies for research? Anyone know how it works?

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[Lukkie]

depends on the fellowship mostly. here for Hem/Onc fellowship its 3 years, where 2 years is Fellowship focusing primarily on lab research while seeing a few patients, with 1 year of Internship where you see a good number of patients while doing little if any benchwork.

 

[Katatonic]

I don't think there's a specific residency FOR research, you usually do a residency in whatever specialty you want to go into (or where your research area will be). You might want to go ask this in the Physician Scientist forum as they're all very helpful with questions about that route.

 

[Revilla]

I don't think there's a specific residency FOR research, you usually do a residency in whatever specialty you want to go into (or where your research area will be). You might want to go ask this in the Physician Scientist forum as they're all very helpful with questions about that route.

Thanks for the reply guys. I'll look up the Physician Scientist forum for more info!

 

[LizzyM]

Many (most) physicians who do research also provide clinical care. They most often do an internship and residency and then learn research skills within in a subspecialty during a fellowship. Most often the fellowship includes patient care as well as research.

There are some fellowships with a research focus for those who choose not to become licensed to practice medicine but those are very rare and it is the rare medical school graduate who wants to close the door to ever caring for patients.

During a fellowship, the fellow is often writing grant proposals that, if funded, will provide partial salary support after the fellowship is completed. A physician/researcher will often be on the payroll of a medical school or pharmaceutical company. The people in pharm may not have any patient care responsibilities but those in academic settings bring in money through patient care, research grants, and also support the educational activities of the medical school through lectures and/or bedside teaching and the supervision of medical students, residents and fellows in clinical settings.

 

[Revilla]

Many (most) physicians who do research also provide clinical care. They most often do an internship and residency and then learn research skills within in a subspecialty during a fellowship. Most often the fellowship includes patient care as well as research.

There are some fellowships with a research focus for those who choose not to become licensed to practice medicine but those are very rare and it is the rare medical school graduate who wants to close the door to ever caring for patients.

During a fellowship, the fellow is often writing grant proposals that, if funded, will provide partial salary support after the fellowship is completed. A physician/researcher will often be on the payroll of a medical school or pharmaceutical company. The people in pharm may not have any patient care responsibilities but those in academic settings bring in money through patient care, research grants, and also support the educational activities of the medical school through lectures and/or bedside teaching and the supervision of medical students, residents and fellows in clinical settings.

I think I get it now. Thanks! I wasn't positive if researchers were clinicians as well or not.

 

[neuro1617]

So am I right in saying you can do research as an MD during a regular residency/fellowship? Would it be a better idea to do a Master's in biomedical science or something of the sort so that you can get that serious research experience before medical school? Also I've found some schools have the option of taking a year (MSIII) to do research-an example is Pitt's CSTP, if you eventually want to do clinical research as an MD-and hten continuing w/ years 4&5. Almost like an MD/PhD but not as in-depth. Or can any MD do research after med school?

 

[Lukkie]

So am I right in saying you can do research as an MD during a regular residency/fellowship? Would it be a better idea to do a Master's in biomedical science or something of the sort so that you can get that serious research experience before medical school? Also I've found some schools have the option of taking a year (MSIII) to do research-an example is Pitt's CSTP, if you eventually want to do clinical research as an MD-and hten continuing w/ years 4&5. Almost like an MD/PhD but not as in-depth. Or can any MD do research after med school?

you can definitely do research during MS1 and 2 and especially the summer in between (a lot of times there are special programs specifically designed for med students to do research in summer and get a stipend, at UCLA its called STTP). some continue in a lesser capacity to MS3-4. sometimes people take a year off after MS4 to do research before applying for residency. for my division, the research group is about 12-15 pure MDs, who commit over 50% of their time to research. and for them they are hardly at the bench, they usually have undegrad students, full time researcher staff, med students, and fellows doing the actual test tube work for them.

 

[LizzyM]

So am I right in saying you can do research as an MD during a regular residency/fellowship? Would it be a better idea to do a Master's in biomedical science or something of the sort so that you can get that serious research experience before medical school? Also I've found some schools have the option of taking a year (MSIII) to do research-an example is Pitt's CSTP, if you eventually want to do clinical research as an MD-and hten continuing w/ years 4&5. Almost like an MD/PhD but not as in-depth. Or can any MD do research after med school?

Many get MS degrees during their fellowships. That way the skills are up-to-date and fresh when they hit the job market/submit proposals. And another bonus: the fellowship program most often picks up the tab for tuition!