The Role of Medical Students in Clinical Research

[Mark Lee]

Hi everyone,

I will be an incoming M1 this fall and I was looking into to be involved in clinical research while as a student. Clinical research is an area that I have not touched as a pre-medical student, so I don't have a great understanding of how much I can be involved in as a medical student.

I was talking to my PI (who does both bench and clinical research, I am in the bench research lab) who said that clinical research is very complex and most medical students are only involved in the analytics of the data collected in clinical research. Is this true? What is generally the role that medical students play during clinical trials/research?

Thank you in advance for any of y'all's insight!

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[LizzyM]

In one of my roles, I see the names of everyone involved in clinical trials at my institution. It is very rare to see a medical student's name. Sometimes a student will be involved in a small project, often patient outcomes or satisfaction survey research, which might include patients who are enrolled in clinical trials.

The requirements for engagement in clinical trials means many regulatory hoops to jump through and consequently, it is unusual to see engagement in clinical research until residency.

 

[JDHz]

As a clinical research coordinator I can tell you now that medical students are rarely involved in clinical research. At most we will put them on tissue collection study protocols since they may be in the OR often enough to be handling the specimen, but even that is highly unlikely. Small scale PI initiated studies that are only given relatively small grants or department funds may have med students collecting/analyzing data, but you will have little patient contact in most cases if that is what you are looking for.

 

[Mark Lee]

In one of my roles, I see the names of everyone involved in clinical trials at my institution. It is very rare to see a medical student's name. Sometimes a student will be involved in a small project, often patient outcomes or satisfaction survey research, which might include patients who are enrolled in clinical trials.

The requirements for engagement in clinical trials means many regulatory hoops to jump through and consequently, it is unusual to see engagement in clinical research until residency.

As a clinical research coordinator I can tell you now that medical students are rarely involved in clinical research. At most we will put them on tissue collection study protocols since they may be in the OR often enough to be handling the specimen, but even that is highly unlikely. Small scale PI initiated studies that are only given relatively small grants or department funds may have med students collecting/analyzing data, but you will have little patient contact in most cases if that is what you are looking for.

Thank you so much for your insights. This may just be due to bias from looking at reddit/sdn but I see many medical students say they do clinical research and they recommend clinical research over bench research for the purposes of more publication potential and becoming competitive for residencies. From what you have stated above, I assume their roles in these project are not large, but what specifically are they potentially doing in these projects?

 

[Deltasidearm]

Please note that not all clinical research is clinical trials. As a medical student, you are much more likely to be involved in observational studies (i.e. cohort, case-control, case report/series).

what specifically are they potentially doing in these projects?

Your responsibilities will depend heavily on the project itself, your skills, and how many others are working on it. You may be doing any combination of chart review, literature review, basic statistical analysis, talking to patients, coding/analyzing radiology/pathology, writing manuscripts/abstracts, or more.

 

[JDHz]

Thank you so much for your insights. This may just be due to bias from looking at reddit/sdn but I see many medical students say they do clinical research and they recommend clinical research over bench research for the purposes of more publication potential and becoming competitive for residencies. From what you have stated above, I assume their roles in these project are not large, but what specifically are they potentially doing in these projects?

Yes they do have publication potential as they are more than likely working on patient outcomes studies. Usually they are analyzing data from questionnaires, patient charts and/or other assessments, but are likely not doing the assessments themselves. Definitely worth doing if you want to step into clinical research in the future.

 

[GoSpursGo]

Agree with others, not all clinical research is clinical trials. Because medical students are only around for a few years and have limited time, it is generally not feasible for them to be involved in prospective research studies; rather, they more frequently are involved in analysis of data that have already been gathered and write retrospective studies.

 

[Mark Lee]

Please note that not all clinical research is clinical trials. As a medical student, you are much more likely to be involved in observational studies (i.e. cohort, case-control, case report/series).

Your responsibilities will depend heavily on the project itself, your skills, and how many others are working on it. You may be doing any combination of chart review, literature review, basic statistical analysis, talking to patients, coding/analyzing radiology/pathology, writing manuscripts/abstracts, or more.

Yes they do have publication potential as they are more than likely working on patient outcomes studies. Usually they are analyzing data from questionnaires, patient charts and/or other assessments, but are likely not doing the assessments themselves. Definitely worth doing if you want to step into clinical research in the future.

Agree with others, not all clinical research is clinical trials. Because medical students are only around for a few years and have limited time, it is generally not feasible for them to be involved in prospective research studies; rather, they more frequently are involved in analysis of data that have already been gathered and write retrospective studies.

Thank you everyone! I guess I overestimated what could be feasibly done

 

[pazzer2]

A typical prospective clinical trial (even a phase 1 single dose study) takes about a year from start to finish, including the report writing. Trials in later phases can span up to multiple years -- well beyond the length of your education in medical school. Clinical trials are done with investigators (who are often MDs or PhDs), and they have coordinators and sub-investigators to help with all of the work. Since you are a medical student, I doubt that any of the PIs would allow you to do much of anything, since their neck is on the line if something goes wrong.

But that doesn't mean you can't get involved in clinical research. There are many types of analyses that are done after the fact (post-hoc) or retrospective. These involve analyzing the datasets to look for specific research questions. Much easier to do this because the data are already collected. Having a specific research question and understanding of basic statistical methods will help. Many pharma companies now make their clinical trial data available to the scientific community for free. So there are large datasets out there waiting to be used. Coming up with the research question is the hardest part.

 

[xDNA]

Current MS1, I had no research prior to medical school and so far my participation in research has been the following: Chart review, Analyzing radiological images, and writing abstracts.