Research during rotations at a clinical site in the middle of nowhere

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I'm OMS-2 returning for the spring semester with no research to my name (including any undergraduate research experiences). I'd like to change that as soon as possible.

We spend our pre-clinical years in an osteopathic medical school campus near a city with a major academic medical center. However, I've been assigned to a rotation site that is a small community hospital about 1.5 hours away from this city.

My questions are:

What would be my best bet for getting adequate research experiences by the time ERAS rolls around? Should I start attempting to build relationships with PIs at the academic medical center right now? How would one go about balancing studying for boards during 2nd semester of OMS-II with research? Has anybody else experienced commuting 1.5 hours during clinical rotations to gain research experience?

 

[Tiran145]

Try and see if there are remote projects you can do. For example I just finished up a project that I never even met the PI in person even though he’s on my med schools faculty because the whole project could be done on my laptop. Think database research and retrospective stuff like meta analysis etc. you could also ask attending if you could write case reports

 

[sab3156]

My questions are:

What would be my best bet for getting adequate research experiences by the time ERAS rolls around? Should I start attempting to build relationships with PIs at the academic medical center right now? How would one go about balancing studying for boards during 2nd semester of OMS-II with research? Has anybody else experienced commuting 1.5 hours during clinical rotations to gain research experience?

You have to ask yourself first what you're interested in. Doing random research with random people is not a good use of your time. Do you have any particular specialty in mind?

After that, yes - you should definitely try and get in touch with the academic centers in the city. Depending on the nature of the research, you may not have to go in at all or you might go maybe once a week or something. You can discuss these details with whomever you're doing work with. What you'll have to do is email faculty or get in touch with residents in the specialty you want to do research in. Depending on how active and competitive the research positions at the academic center you're talking about are, you may not even get any reply back.

With the right mentor, research is a great experience and will be a good use of your time. As for 2nd semester, I'm sure the people working with you will understand that you are going to be busy. You should let them know about your timeline regarding taking boards and whatnot.

 

[blergblergblerg]

Try and see if there are remote projects you can do. For example I just finished up a project that I never even met the PI in person even though he’s on my med schools faculty because the whole project could be done on my laptop. Think database research and retrospective stuff like meta analysis etc. you could also ask attending if you could write case reports

Great ideas, thank you!

You have to ask yourself first what you're interested in. Doing random research with random people is not a good use of your time. Do you have any particular specialty in mind?

Trying to decide between surgery vs. internal medicine --> GI. (I realize the day-to-day work of the fields is very different-- I just feel a bit torn.)