Summer Research Ideas/Examples

[AA|FCB|DOC]

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Hi all,

I am an MS1 trying to plan for my summer. I have heard of many students picking up research projects where they hop onto a resident's work, and then finish up with a publication. I thought this would work well with my situation as I could pick up projects that are also sustainable through the second year with a less heavy time commitment. I was wondering who has done this, and what type of work were you exactly doing? Was it clinical research? Were you just putting together data and organizing it after it was all acquired? Were you able to get more involved? I am trying to get a more concrete idea of what type of things people did so I can narrow down my search. I am not too interested in the grant programs that require 40 hours of benchwork during the summer with a stipend. I am fine with working for free but having a bit more flexibility and doing things that I can also continue later on if needed. Even fine with picking up data that has been already collected, reorganizing, analyzing, and writing about it.

Any input is approciated.

 

[AA|FCB|DOC]

Giving it another shot...any advice would be appreciated 🙂

 

[Adjet]

I did something like this. In the vast majority of cases it will be a clinical project and in a lot of cases, a retrospective chart review (where you fill excel spreadsheets with patient data from the EMR and run stats). In my experience, this is where a lot of med students help out, since it can be too time consuming for a resident, and you may be asked to help with writing depending on how much ownership you're given. It's fairly ideal since you'd be working with others who have a vested interest in the project moving forward and it's usually very flexible since you just need access to the EMR to get going.

 

[AA|FCB|DOC]

I did something like this. In the vast majority of cases it will be a clinical project and in a lot of cases, a retrospective chart review (where you fill excel spreadsheets with patient data from the EMR and run stats). In my experience, this is where a lot of med students help out, since it can be too time consuming for a resident, and you may be asked to help with writing depending on how much ownership you're given. It's fairly ideal since you'd be working with others who have a vested interest in the project moving forward and it's usually very flexible since you just need access to the EMR to get going.

Thanks for your input. Exactly the type of clues I was looking for. Can you also give me an example of who you were reaching out to? Wss it the residents you were basically aiming to contact?

 

[Adjet]

An upper year med student was able to rope me in, so I got lucky. But reaching out to residents directly is one approach. More often, students reach out to attendings who get them on a project with a resident working on it. The dynamics vary by department/institution so not sure about your exact situation, but if I were you, I would start reaching out to attendings and residents in the area you're interested in asap (via email or shadowing) so you can get ready for summer. What I described in my previous post is probably the most ideal situation, so see if you can land yourself something like that.

 

[CubsFan314]

I took a more longitudinal view of my research opportunity between M1 and M2 years. Rather than just working on a single project, I used the summer to really get involved with a research group. This allowed be to indeed be involved in a project during that summer (with a publication) but also has kept me involved for the rest of this year and I plan to continue to work with the group for the rest of medical school. This approach has allowed me to get more publications with the group as well as conference presentation of the research.

 

[AA|FCB|DOC]

I took a more longitudinal view of my research opportunity between M1 and M2 years. Rather than just working on a single project, I used the summer to really get involved with a research group. This allowed be to indeed be involved in a project during that summer (with a publication) but also has kept me involved for the rest of this year and I plan to continue to work with the group for the rest of medical school. This approach has allowed me to get more publications with the group as well as conference presentation of the research.

That would be an ideal situation for me if I can get something like that as well. Do you mind expanding on the type of things you were doing? Were you also mostly doing retrospective chart review and/or running stats, etc?

 

[.hematoma.]

Wanted to provide my two cents because I am taking a unique route (in addition to seeking out labs to work in)... I identified projects that I wanted to undertake on my own and that were feasible for a medical student to do with minimal time input from a faculty member. Because you are a graduate student, you can apply for IRB as the lead researcher and find a faculty member who is willing to be the sponsor for the project. I've had great success so far with this method, and have submitted IRB's for 3 different projects so far! So if you have a reasonable research idea, you can totally take it on by yourself/with a team of other medical students under the advice of a faculty mentor!

Send me a message if you have more questions!