What specialties don’t require research?

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I know you shouldn’t choose a specialty based on whether or not research is required, but I’m kinda nervous about it because I have only a little bit of bench research experience from undergrad.

Just out of curiosity though, is there anything besides family/ internal med where it isn’t required?

 

[Mariokart101]

EM doesnt require it either. But helps boost competitiveness.

 

[nimbus]

Anesthesia, OB/gyn, Peds, psych, PMR, neurology.

Basically all the average and below average competitive specialties.

 

[Medic741]

I know you shouldn’t choose a specialty based on whether or not research is required, but I’m kinda nervous about it because I have only a little bit of bench research experience from undergrad.

Just out of curiosity though, is there anything besides family/ internal med where it isn’t required?

If you’re starting medical school there are endless opportunities that have nothing to do with benchwork. I’ve done probably ~6 projects in M1/2 that have lead to either an oral presentation, poster or submitted manuscript without once touching wet lab.

It’s really easy to find opportunities if you’re willing to do data work. Definitely not necessary for the specialties above, but it can be a really fun/productive part of school

 

[Tenk]

Bench research is almost non existent in med school unless you’re a PhD or already attached to a lab. It’s pretty easy to get some sort of clinical research under your belt in 3 years.

 

[BorderlineQueen]

Also internal medicine and family medicine don’t require research.

 

[NickNaylor]

All research will make you more competitive no matter the field, and particularly competitive programs within fields - even fields that may not be seen as "competitive" - will expect it. At a minimum you will be expected to do a QI project during residency which requires a minimum of familiarity with research processes and how to formulate a research question that you can answer. Some programs will include dedicated research time in their curriculum to allow you to develop and/or work on a project during your residency.

The tl;dr here is that you should try and do research if at all possible. All research is not created equal, and some things are much easier to get tangible products (publications, poster presentations, abstracts, etc.) than others. Further, you may find something that you're really interested in, which makes doing it all that much easier. Keep an ear out for things that seem interesting to you and try and get involved if you can. No is expecting you to be a superstar academic with multiple publications, but all programs will expect that you have a minimum passing familiarity with research.

 

[deleted600623]

If you’re starting medical school there are endless opportunities that have nothing to do with benchwork. I’ve done probably ~6 projects in M1/2 that have lead to either an oral presentation, poster or submitted manuscript without once touching wet lab.

It’s really easy to find opportunities if you’re willing to do data work. Definitely not necessary for the specialties above, but it can be a really fun/productive part of school

This is encouraging. What is the time commitment for data work with multiple projects?

 

[Medic741]

This is encouraging. What is the time commitment for data work with multiple projects?

So at first it was probably 10-20 hours a week? Basically I just said yes to projects that sounded ‘worth my time’ and asked when the PI wanted it done and treated their word as gospel.

That got me put in charge of the other students in the lab so now I just distribute work, supervise and make sure it gets done on time and that everything gets double checked. Which is pretty sweet.

 

[initialize]

Now when you guys say “data work” in research, does that pretty much only mean statistical analysis? Because let’s be honest, no one likes finding standard deviations, p values, etc. That stuff is a chore.

 

[phonyreal98]

Now when you guys say “data work” in research, does that pretty much only mean statistical analysis? Because let’s be honest, no one likes finding standard deviations, p values, etc. That stuff is a chore.

Um. I do.

 

[Sterling_Archer]

Now when you guys say “data work” in research, does that pretty much only mean statistical analysis? Because let’s be honest, no one likes finding standard deviations, p values, etc. That stuff is a chore.

I did some "data" work. Basically the PI gave us a bunch of numbers and we wrote a manuscript from it. Probably spent like 20 hours on it over a semester. Easy way to get a publication since the data collection is already done.

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

So at first it was probably 10-20 hours a week? Basically I just said yes to projects that sounded ‘worth my time’ and asked when the PI wanted it done and treated their word as gospel.

That got me put in charge of the other students in the lab so now I just distribute work, supervise and make sure it gets done on time and that everything gets double checked. Which is pretty sweet.

....... Do we go to the same school? Because this is exactly the set up with the research team at my school lol

 

[efle]

Most of the time, "research" for us lowly med students means "pulling data out of medical records into excel." If you're lucky, they'll then let you analyze that data, but honestly most of the time you do the scut and then it gets handed off to people higher on the totem pole to do the analysis and writeup.

Good news is, it's hella easy to get a bunch of middle authorships by being the EMR data extraction monkey.

Bad news is, it's the most mind-meltingly boring thing on the planet.

 

[Lawpy]

Most of the time, "research" for us lowly med students means "pulling data out of medical records into excel." If you're lucky, they'll then let you analyze that data, but honestly most of the time you do the scut and then it gets handed off to people higher on the totem pole to do the analysis and writeup.

Good news is, it's hella easy to get a bunch of middle authorships by being the EMR data extraction monkey.

Bad news is, it's the most mind-meltingly boring thing on the planet.

Good to see you posting more in allo

 

[efle]

Good to see you posting more in allo

Hitting the wards makes the med student subreddit and allo boards way more engaging

 

[Lawpy]

Hitting the wards makes the med student subreddit and allo boards way more engaging

Also memes

 

[deleted600623]

Most of the time, "research" for us lowly med students means "pulling data out of medical records into excel." If you're lucky, they'll then let you analyze that data, but honestly most of the time you do the scut and then it gets handed off to people higher on the totem pole to do the analysis and writeup.

Good news is, it's hella easy to get a bunch of middle authorships by being the EMR data extraction monkey.

Bad news is, it's the most mind-meltingly boring thing on the planet.

As someone who has little research experience but is interested in competitive specialties, this is pretty encouraging. I’ll gladly extract data to help get multiple publications so I can match Ortho. Assuming I have the step score of course.