What questions to expect during interview

[deschutes]

No it's not Although I did say you both made my head hurt! But that might also have been secondary to having dinner too late.

Heck, I asked the question first about why IM/subspecialty.

And every researcher is different. Just like every IMG

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[quant]

4) access to K08 grants which represents a great first step in a science career.

But anyways, beary, I'm hanging my hat on the reasons you list above. But I hear arguments from the other side (PhD only folks) that this isn't a huge advantage...is it worth 4 years of med school and additional clinical training for more years?

In my limited experience, i would have to say that it IS indeed worth the extra four years of medical school. My reasons go like this.....

For one, i believe that good science is about asking the right questions....and KNOWING what a good question is and how to go about it. What kind of perspective you look at it from. I think, and maybe im shooting off my mouth here, The databank you aquire by the study of medicine equips you to ask the right questions, and be able to sift the good questions from the crappy ones.

Having said that, one thing that i think medicine DOES NOT equip you for is the right techniques......I think that is purely something that you need to have the zeal for to acquire. To ask the right questions is ok, but if you are not proficient and daring enough to learn and use the tools required to answer those questions, you still wouldnt be able to do good science.

Tools in opinion are not necessarily good scientific instruments alone, but also analysis tools like statistics etc....

Just my take on it...

 

[deschutes]

I was only being facetious when I asked my "Hell, why even do medicine?" question. Really.

I'm currently on Day 2 of a three-day rotation in the histocompatibility lab, being beaned over the head every other hour with strings of letters and numbers.

Tech 1: so you centrifuge whole blood at 1800 RPM for 10 minutes, and then you pipet off the plasma and buffy coat, and add a couple of pumps of RPMI.
deschutes: *blinking* RPMI? That's... a cell culture media of some sort?
Tech 1: Yes, that's right. And then we'll add the beads and vortex it, and place it in the magnetic holder for one minute...

Tech 2: ...and then you add the reagent, and then you incubate the cells at 37 C for 40 minutes.
deschutes: *blinking hard* So um, the underlying principle is to test um, unknown patient cells against known um, antibodies in donor serum?

I'm not pooping on techs, nor am I saying techs and grad students are the same, but my point is that I can quite easily see how a pure basic science investigator path might lead someone to not see the forest for the trees.

The databank you aquire by the study of medicine equips you to ask the right questions, and be able to sift the good questions from the crappy ones.

Tools in opinion are not necessarily good scientific instruments alone, but also analysis tools like statistics etc....

Agreed. Tools can be intangible. The more I get into research work the more I realize how much my applied stats sucks and how much I'm going to have to teach myself. Bleh! I mean, this is a person who keeps having to look up how to calculate true/false positives and true/false negatives

On the other hand, I don't think I have the fortitude to sit through say, a semester of formal statistics education (even if I had the time) so I guess I really will have to learn as I go.

People always ask 'do you want to do academics or PP'. When I say academics they assume I mean lab research. But I imagine myself as an "academic" diagnostician-educator. I have done some successful translational research and enjoyed it also.

drPLUM, I'm with ya on this one. On interviews I learnt to say "I want to do academics, but the word means different things to different people. And this is what I mean..." etc.

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This thread has been completely diverted from the original, but those who still have burning "What questions am I gonna get on interview day?" queries should ask them just whenever.

 

[Aubrey]

I'm sure lots of us have seen this before, but at the ASIP website they have a brochure talking about careers as clinician scientists:

http://www.asip.org/trainees/path.pdf

I thought there might be some useful jumping off points in there for the inevitable "Why pathology?" discussion that we will all encounter.