research hard stressful?

[yowhatup]

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This will be the first summer, when I do clinical research. It is with a department that I am interested in applying to for residency later down the road.

I wanted some more information about any of your research experiences. Is it generally stressful and busy, or is it an enjoyable learning experience where it is more shadowing than a hands-on approach.

And how did the faculty treat you when you were doing the research? Finally, is it easy to get published?

 

[Siverhideo1985]

I do research in a physical chemistry lab. From what I can gather from this and previous experiences it all very much depends on who your boss is. I have two great PIs that I answer to so the job is mostly fun, relaxed, and highly stimulating. But then again you might end up with the wrong people and get yelled at the whole day because you didn't come in at 7am and left before 10pm.

In general the experience can be highly variable. As for publications, it is doable if you put in the time and you are working on a fruitful project. But, make no mistake about it...most people don't work on a project for 2 months and then write up a paper and publish it...just the writing/correction/review process of a publication can take months.

But again, it is all highly variable. And this is just speaking from my research experiences.

 

[135892]

This will be the first summer, when I do clinical research. It is with a department that I am interested in applying to for residency later down the road.

I wanted some more information about any of your research experiences. Is it generally stressful and busy, or is it an enjoyable learning experience where it is more shadowing than a hands-on approach.

And how did the faculty treat you when you were doing the research? Finally, is it easy to get published?

To all of your questions... it all depends on your PI and lab.

 

[JeetKuneDo]

Since the topic of publications came up, I was wondering if it would count as a publication if you did most of the lab work and data collection and also gave some input into the final paper but did not actually write it.

 

[Dr McSexy]

Since the topic of publications came up, I was wondering if it would count as a publication if you did most of the lab work and data collection and also gave some input into the final paper but did not actually write it.

Most likely not. Unless you get your name listed as one of authors of the paper, I don't think you have a right to count it as one of your publications.

You describe the work of many undergraduates; i.e. lots of hands on experimentation and data collection, some input on the paper and even making diagrams for it. But you don't do any of the actual writing nor analyzing of the data. You don't contribute significantly to the thought process of the project nor did you come up with the idea for the project.

You should get mentioned in the acknowledgments section though. Not that it's worth anything.

 

[starfishprime]

Since the topic of publications came up, I was wondering if it would count as a publication if you did most of the lab work and data collection and also gave some input into the final paper but did not actually write it.

Is your name on the paper? If so, yes. If not, no.
Very few papers have less than two authors, and it's not uncommon to see six or more. Do you think all those people were huddled around a typewriter?
They weren't.

 

[qmcat]

This will be the first summer, when I do clinical research. It is with a department that I am interested in applying to for residency later down the road.

I wanted some more information about any of your research experiences. Is it generally stressful and busy, or is it an enjoyable learning experience where it is more shadowing than a hands-on approach.

And how did the faculty treat you when you were doing the research? Finally, is it easy to get published?

Congrats on getting the research position! Clinical research is a lot different from bench research. I work in clinical research, and most of it is just databasing and statistics. Depending on if you're doing Clinical Trials or Statistical studies, your experience will vary.

At the place where I work, we have both going on. In clinical trials, you get to talk to patients, enroll them in studies, do some paperwork, and hand out drugs. For the more statistical studies, most of the time, you just get a fat stack of papers/charts/binders, and you just go through them collecting data and analyzing them -- so not much patient interaction there.

From my experience, it's generally not that stressful. It could be busy depending on what your role is in the research team. For me, it really got stressful when you have a deadline and you have a million stacks of paper/charts to go through.

My faculty wasn't around that much. The big boss just came in to check on my team once a month or so. The rest of the time, it's just me and the team. We do everything together, which is kind of nice because you really get to bond with them, haha.

Publishing will also depend on how prolific your research team is. Writing papers/abstracts and submitting them doesn't guarantee an accepted publication. I worked in clinical research for 3 years already, and I've gone through 6 different submissions of papers and abstracts for the projects I've been working on, and I've only gotten a paper accepted recently. So yes, it can be pretty challenging to publish.

In all, I think you shouldn't worry about it too much at this stage. Just go with the flow and take what you can out of the experience. Assuming you're in undergrad, the accomplishment that comes out of research isn't going to be as valuable as the experience of doing research. I would look at any publications as icing on the cake, rather than something that you absolutely must have.

 

[JeetKuneDo]

Most likely not. Unless you get your name listed as one of authors of the paper, I don't think you have a right to count it as one of your publications.

You describe the work of many undergraduates; i.e. lots of hands on experimentation and data collection, some input on the paper and even making diagrams for it. But you don't do any of the actual writing nor analyzing of the data. You don't contribute significantly to the thought process of the project nor did you come up with the idea for the project.

You should get mentioned in the acknowledgments section though. Not that it's worth anything.

Is your name on the paper? If so, yes. If not, no.
Very few papers have less than two authors, and it's not uncommon to see six or more. Do you think all those people were huddled around a typewriter?
They weren't.

Thanks for the responses. I'll have to cross my fingers then to hope that they will be gracious enough to allow me to be mentioned as an author.

 

[yowhatup]

Congrats on getting the research position! Clinical research is a lot different from bench research. I work in clinical research, and most of it is just databasing and statistics. Depending on if you're doing Clinical Trials or Statistical studies, your experience will vary.

At the place where I work, we have both going on. In clinical trials, you get to talk to patients, enroll them in studies, do some paperwork, and hand out drugs. For the more statistical studies, most of the time, you just get a fat stack of papers/charts/binders, and you just go through them collecting data and analyzing them -- so not much patient interaction there.

From my experience, it's generally not that stressful. It could be busy depending on what your role is in the research team. For me, it really got stressful when you have a deadline and you have a million stacks of paper/charts to go through.

My faculty wasn't around that much. The big boss just came in to check on my team once a month or so. The rest of the time, it's just me and the team. We do everything together, which is kind of nice because you really get to bond with them, haha.

Publishing will also depend on how prolific your research team is. Writing papers/abstracts and submitting them doesn't guarantee an accepted publication. I worked in clinical research for 3 years already, and I've gone through 6 different submissions of papers and abstracts for the projects I've been working on, and I've only gotten a paper accepted recently. So yes, it can be pretty challenging to publish.

In all, I think you shouldn't worry about it too much at this stage. Just go with the flow and take what you can out of the experience. Assuming you're in undergrad, the accomplishment that comes out of research isn't going to be as valuable as the experience of doing research. I would look at any publications as icing on the cake, rather than something that you absolutely must have.

Is mastery in Excel needed if participating in Statistical Studies... I'm not sure yet whether I will be participating in Clinical or Statistical but if it is Statistical is being an expert in EXCEL a must??

 

[qmcat]

Is mastery in Excel needed if participating in Statistical Studies... I'm not sure yet whether I will be participating in Clinical or Statistical but if it is Statistical is being an expert in EXCEL a must??

I doubt that you need to be an expert now... but I'm pretty sure whoever you're working with can train you. From my experience, I came in knowing a lot about Excel, but we rarely use it to do analysis. The programs I had to learn to use were Microsoft Access (for databasing) and STATA (for statistical analysis)... both of those I learned from my boss and co-workers.