What is a Physician Scientist?

[Cinso Takumi]

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I wanna be a Physician, specialist in surgery, not sure which type yet but working on it. Also, I wanna know what's a Physician Scientist?

 

[Winged Scapula]

Moving to Pre Allo

 

[deleted407021]

A doctor what does research.

Here.

 

[allantois]

think of it as 180 degrees opposite of surgeon😛

 

[JubalHarshaw]

I've heard that a Physician Scientist is someone that is both a physician and a scientist. Hope this helps, OP.

 

[Psai]

It's kinda like being a Christian scientist except that you believe in things that actually work

 

[Lawgiver]

So I can't drop this water on you? Darn.

 

[LizzyM]

think of it as 180 degrees opposite of surgeon😛

Wrong!

A physician scientist combines clinical care and research. Medical Science Training Programs combine MD and PhD to train physician scientists. Not all physician scientists have a PhD but that training does provide opportunities to learn the process.

 

[medicalmnt]

MD/PhD

You don't need the PhD to do research though.

 

[Microglia]

We are this rare sort of creature you hear about all the time when interviewees say they want to do academic medicine, but never ever see in real practice.

 

[Microglia]

MD/PhD

You don't need the PhD to do research though.

Clinical research, certainly not. Bench research is harder to break into every day without a PhD- but still possible.

To OP's original question with less sarcasm: The prototypical physician scientist is a physician that sees patients one day a week, and spends the other 4 trying to create diagnostic tests and new treatments for the patients they see. In a field like oncology or immunology you'll see many of them seeing patients while developing and testing new cancer drugs or immunomodulatory agents, and in neurology you'll find them seeing alzheimer's patients while trying to find ways to detect it before symptoms are present and generating more effective mouse models to test new therapeutics on. The idea is "bedside to bench to bedside" research. Find a problem the patients need a solution to, go to the lab and come up with a safe and animal tested solution, then bring it to the patients for clinical trials.

A clinician scientist is a physician that does clinical research with some of their week, ie sees hypertension patients and asks questions like "In patients with hypertension and type 2 diabetes, what combination of currently existing drugs decreases mortality the most?"

Difference: One is very focused on creating something new, while the other is focused on most effectively using what we have.

 

[breakintheroof]

Clinical research, certainly not. Bench research is harder to break into every day without a PhD- but still possible.

To OP's original question with less sarcasm: The prototypical physician scientist is a physician that sees patients one day a week, and spends the other 4 trying to create diagnostic tests and new treatments for the patients they see. In a field like oncology or immunology you'll see many of them seeing patients while developing and testing new cancer drugs or immunomodulatory agents, and in neurology you'll find them seeing alzheimer's patients while trying to find ways to detect it before symptoms are present and generating more effective mouse models to test new therapeutics on. The idea is "bedside to bench to bedside" research. Find a problem the patients need a solution to, go to the lab and come up with a safe and animal tested solution, then bring it to the patients for clinical trials.

A clinician scientist is a physician that does clinical research with some of their week, ie sees hypertension patients and asks questions like "In patients with hypertension and type 2 diabetes, what combination of currently existing drugs decreases mortality the most?"

Difference: One is very focused on creating something new, while the other is focused on most effectively using what we have.

This is a helpful post on something that has always confused me, thank you. Once when I was writing secondaries, I wrote that because my goal is to be a physician and do (clinical/population) research, I wanted to be a physician scientist. Fortunately I sent that one to my boss for editing, who told me that no, I don't.

 

[cyclopes93]

Clinical data is much easily accessible by a physician scientist (someone who hold an MD/PhD). With a straight PhD, you cannot have access to a lot of clinical data if you are interested in biomedical/patient info related research. You'd have you to run a lot of hoops. If your goal is surgery, you should just hold your horses and do a MD and focus on the research aspect as time allows (which if you are slow might never happen).

 

[Cyberdyne 101]

A clinician scientist is a physician that does clinical research with some of their week, ie sees hypertension patients and asks questions like "In patients with hypertension and type 2 diabetes, what combination of currently existing drugs decreases mortality the most.

Does this fall under the clinical epidemiology umbrella? Or did you just basically define clinical epidemiology as a whole?

 

[FalconSlice]

I wanna be a Physician, specialist in surgery, not sure which type yet but working on it. Also, I wanna know what's a Physician Scientist?

There is an entire sub forum about this. Go forth and use the search function.

 

[z_maverica]

I'm a bit confused. I thought specialists were what people become after proving themselves to be the best in their field. Do we now have a "pre-specialist" category? I want in too!

🙂