Silly question: Clinical Academic Medicine vs. Physician-Scientist

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legitbeans

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So this might seem like a silly question, but what's the difference between the two. I've always thought that they were one and the same (spending time in the lab and the clinic), but apparently, there's a difference. From what I've gathered through a few google searches, Clinical Academic Medicine is 50/50 split between lab and clinic, whereas Physician-Scientist is more of lab focused, like 25/75 or even 10/90. Can someone confirm? Because I might have misidentified my future career goals for some of my secondaries (whoops)
 
So this might seem like a silly question, but what's the difference between the two. I've always thought that they were one and the same (spending time in the lab and the clinic), but apparently, there's a difference. From what I've gathered through a few google searches, Clinical Academic Medicine is 50/50 split between lab and clinic, whereas Physician-Scientist is more of lab focused, like 25/75 or even 10/90. Can someone confirm? Because I might have misidentified my future career goals for some of my secondaries (whoops)
Could be wrong too, but I thought physician-scientist is the MD/PhD route and focuses more on bench/lab science with the time distinction you menioned, while the clinical one doesnt have the same need for a PhD, is more clinical research and has a more even time split
 
Physician-scientist generally has time split between lab and clinic and the split might be 80-20 or 90-10 depending on one's funding.

Physician-scientists are generally a subset of physicians in academic medicine. When we say "academic medicine" we mean that you are on the payroll of a medical school or the med school's affiliated clinical entity rather than being in a for-profit group practice, working for a non-med school affiliated hospital, or having a solo office (very rare these days). Many physicians in academic medicine are paid almost exclusively out of money they bring in through clinical care of patients. They may have some money coming in for work done with research participants (if the reason for the visit is protocol driven, it may not be covered by insurance and therefore the study sponsor - often big pharma- will pay something equivalent given that time you would otherwise spend treating patients is being used to collect data from a research participant who may also be your patient). Some physicians in academic medicine have small research grants and some have some salary support for administrative tasks related to education (assessing medical students in a clerkship) or the department more broadly (e.g. budgets, space, and hiring of new members of the department). Most are also expected to do what the medical school considers "good citizenship" by participating without compensation in committee work or being engaged in interviewing candidates for med school, residency or fellowship, or spending a dozen hours per year in the classroom or at the bedside as a small group leader.
 
Physician-scientist generally has time split between lab and clinic and the split might be 80-20 or 90-10 depending on one's funding.

Physician-scientists are generally a subset of physicians in academic medicine. When we say "academic medicine" we mean that you are on the payroll of a medical school or the med school's affiliated clinical entity rather than being in a for-profit group practice, working for a non-med school affiliated hospital, or having a solo office (very rare these days). Many physicians in academic medicine are paid almost exclusively out of money they bring in through clinical care of patients. They may have some money coming in for work done with research participants (if the reason for the visit is protocol driven, it may not be covered by insurance and therefore the study sponsor - often big pharma- will pay something equivalent given that time you would otherwise spend treating patients is being used to collect data from a research participant who may also be your patient). Some physicians in academic medicine have small research grants and some have some salary support for administrative tasks related to education (assessing medical students in a clerkship) or the department more broadly (e.g. budgets, space, and hiring of new members of the department). Most are also expected to do what the medical school considers "good citizenship" by participating without compensation in committee work or being engaged in interviewing candidates for med school, residency or fellowship, or spending a dozen hours per year in the classroom or at the bedside as a small group leader.

Thank you so much for the explanation. I asked this question because on Stanford's secondary, they made a clear distinction between choosing between Academic Medicine (Clinical) and Academic Medicine (Physician-Scientist). So if my desired future career path is to spend 50/50 split between research (or other tasks like you mentioned) and patient care, would I select the former?
 
Really? That's interesting. Why do you think these people pursue MD/PhD programs then, as opposed to just MD programs? Do many think that they want to do a lot of research in their careers and then realize during training that they'd rather just stick with mostly/entirely clinical practice?

It is very hard to make a living as a physician-scientist (difficult to be awarded grants) whereas it is more predictable to do patient care as a way of earning a very good livelihood.
 
Really? That's interesting. Why do you think these people pursue MD/PhD programs then, as opposed to just MD programs? Do many think that they want to do a lot of research in their careers and then realize during training that they'd rather just stick with mostly/entirely clinical practice?

Because MD/PhD offer full tuition 🙂)
 
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