Research during 2nd year, 3rd year, or year off?

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spicysoup55

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I am trying to get involved on a clinical research project within the next year or two. Do you guys think it would be best to do it during 2nd year, 3rd year, or take a year off to do it? If you recommend 2nd or 3rd year, how much time per week do you think is feasible to dedicate to research?

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I am trying to get involved on a clinical research project within the next year or two. Do you guys think it would be best to do it during 2nd year, 3rd year, or take a year off to do it? If you recommend 2nd or 3rd year, how much time per week do you think is feasible to dedicate to research?

Year off: The years of your life are precious. A year off for research estranges you from your medical school class, costs you a year of a fulfilling adult life, and also costs you 200K+ of a physician's salary and an extra year of compounded debt (potentially another 100+K) and in exchange provides you a handful of CV bullets. Unless you are dead set on a super competitive field and also both you and your advisors are certain that you need research to achieve that goal (dermatology maybe?) don't take a year off.

When to start: The small amount of clinical research I have been involved in has always taken a lot of days, but relatively few actual hours, so I would start as soon as possible. Sending out emails next week is not a bad idea. For example, for a data mining projects, a sample timeline:
-Send an email to a department head in your field of choice (and maybe a few other fields), get a list of potential advisors, trade emails with them over several weeks or even months
-find an advisor, set a meeting, wait two weeks.
-Meet your advisor and develop a plan for a project
-Spend a day doing CITI training and getting approved to access IRB.net and submit a project,
-spend about 100 hours researching your topic and writing an IRB, submit it to your advisor for edits, wait a month.
- Get the edits and comments back, rewrite and resubmit it to the advisor, wait another month.
- Get advisor approval to submit, send to the IRB, wait three months.
-Get THEIR edits and comments, rewrite resubmit it, wait a month.
-Get IRB approval, do anywhere from 100-1000 hours of data mining, submit to the statistician, wait two months.
-Get the data back, do a write up for a journal, submit to advisor, wait a month.
- Get advisors edits, rewrite and resubmit to your advisor, wait a month
-Get your advisors approval to submit to the journal of CV bullets, hit send, wait three months
-Get THEIR edits and comments, rewrite and resubmit, wait three months
-Paper is accepted, it will be published in 3-12 months

No more than a month of actual work but potentially over two years from the start of a project to a publication. My recommendation would be to try an get a few different irons in the fire as soon as you can and then follow through as fast as you can.
 
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Trying to make a 300 word abstract <150. FML. Probably the hardest part of 'research'
 
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I published 4 papers during summer between M1 and Step 1 time end of M2. It was very doable. Sometimes it would be 10-20hrs a week and sometimes it would be zero hours. It comes in waves during periods of edits, revisions, waiting for acceptances, etc. I wouldn't take a gap year unless you got a troublesome Step 1 score for a very competitive specialty you are committed to.
 
I published 4 papers during summer between M1 and Step 1 time end of M2. It was very doable. Sometimes it would be 10-20hrs a week and sometimes it would be zero hours. It comes in waves during periods of edits, revisions, waiting for acceptances, etc. I wouldn't take a gap year unless you got a troublesome Step 1 score for a very competitive specialty you are committed to.
What kind of research were you able to publish 4 times in one summer?
 
Idk how feasible it is for you, but I've also been told you can do a research rotation as an elective. That may be a valid time to do it during third year. Maybe some of the more experienced people here could weigh in on that.
 
What kind of research were you able to publish 4 times in one summer?

Summer M1 until summer M2 so that was 1 year not a summer unfortunately.

It was clinical surgical sub-specialty research, a lit review, and a lingering pub from M1. Clinical research can go very quick compared to basic science. If the data already exists the only limiting factor is how you quickly you get stats done and write.
 
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