Research in Medical School

[midweststudent1]

I've been accepted to one of the DO schools that places a little more emphasis on research than most of the others. I went to a very small liberal arts school for my UG and never had the opportunity to engage in any research during my time there. My biggest worry--- enough time to research and study. For those who have done research in med school: approximately how many hours did it take per week and how/when will I know if I'll have time for it?

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[Petypet]

I personally did research over the first summer, 12 weeks, 40 hr/week. This has lead to needing to do further work, writing, etc, during 2nd year at maybe 40 hours a semester, so 80 hours total. Then, I anticipate doing more work years 3-4. I anticipate 2-3 publications, 2-3 talks, and a few crappy poster sessions.

Personally, I would avoid doing anything first year, so you can acclimatize to your settings and learn study habits. No sense doing research year 1 if your grades slip. There is ample time in years 2-4 to get a paper out.

 

[koan]

^ Great recs above.

I would add: 1) don't limit yourself to research being done at your own school, explore other nearby medical centers / institutes and just email investigators who seem interesting and productive, 2) explore summer fellowships, many will pay you a nice stipend and connect you with important people, and 3) the goal is to publish by the end of third year, but it takes varying degrees of "a very long time" to go from grant-to-publication, so try to join a high-output lab that cranks out papers and get your name on a few.

There is a student research / publishing forum on SDN with a lot of useful information too. Read the FAQ.

 

[DrEnderW]

Another vote for not starting a project right away. Settle in and see how you are performing in class first. Maybe try for second semester but I'd focus on lining up things for the summer once school gets underway.

I looked outside my COM at locations that have more robust research programs and will lead to easier and more frequent pubs. That's always an option and can be helpful if you want clinical pubs.

 

[AlbinoHawk DO]

In med school do they expect you to be doing your own project or can you just be collaborating a small portion to someone else's project?

 

[Petypet]

In med school do they expect you to be doing your own project or can you just be collaborating a small portion to someone else's project?

Either or. I did my own retrospective study, some people were tacked on to larger projects, it depends on the PI.

 

[scummie]

In med school do they expect you to be doing your own project or can you just be collaborating a small portion to someone else's project?

I think it would be beneficial to first work with a PI on their own project doing whatever. That way you can make connections and work your way up. This leads to more projects, more networking, etc. You get the picture. Personally, I think it's harder to start off on your on. YMMV. A lot of this depends on the culture at your med school and how much they push research.

 

[Petypet]

I think it would be beneficial to first work with a PI on their own project doing whatever. That way you can make connections and work your way up. This leads to more projects, more networking, etc. You get the picture. Personally, I think it's harder to start off on your on. YMMV. A lot of this depends on the culture at your med school and how much they push research.

Yeah exactly. I guess to reiterate my previous point, you HAVE to do something with a PI to get published. You won't be coming up with your own project and just doing something random. Whether or not you do a small project by yourself, or with a larger ensemble doing a piece of a project, is up to the PI.