Who do you email when cold contacting for research opportunities?

[Doctoscope]

Title. I've read that you should generally avoid emailing residents as they're busy and won't have time to respond to you. Do you contact the residency director? Any and all professors? Residency coordinators?

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[GoSpursGo]

Ideally show up at your school's appropriate specialty interest group, assuming that such a thing exists for your specialty of interest. For the competitive fields they will know that students are anxious to get plugged into research so that will likely be an early discussion point.

If such a thing does not exist, then I would start with the PD at your home residency program.

 

[Doctoscope]

Ideally show up at your school's appropriate specialty interest group, assuming that such a thing exists for your specialty of interest. For the competitive fields they will know that students are anxious to get plugged into research so that will likely be an early discussion point.

If such a thing does not exist, then I would start with the PD at your home residency program.

Thanks for your reply. I'm gonna be starting at a DO school (posted in MD forums since this place gets more traffic), so research opportunities here are limited/no home program. I've been making a list of nearby residency programs to reach out to and gathering email addresses, so in that case who should I be contacting? Still the PD?

 

[GoSpursGo]

Thanks for your reply. I'm gonna be starting at a DO school (posted in MD forums since this place gets more traffic), so research opportunities here are limited/no home program. I've been making a list of nearby residency programs to reach out to and gathering email addresses, so in that case who should I be contacting? Still the PD?

Yes to start

 

[CJhooper123]

Ideally show up at your school's appropriate specialty interest group, assuming that such a thing exists for your specialty of interest. For the competitive fields they will know that students are anxious to get plugged into research so that will likely be an early discussion point.

If such a thing does not exist, then I would start with the PD at your home residency program.

Agree w/ GoSpursGo - unless you don't have a home program.

I dealt with this during med school and it's certainly a challenge. Definitely reach out to residency programs in the area. You can begin by emailing the department research coordinators (contact information should be available online). You can try emailing the residency program coordinators as well to see if residents need help. Just know, that not all research experiences are created equal. The perfect situation is a mentor who can help you achieve research productivity (e.g. publications, podiums, etc.) while also vouching for you in the match process.

Always keep the option of doing a research year open between your M3/4 year to demonstrate productivity and find appropriate mentorship (depending on the specialty). Good luck!

 

[MDMechEngr]

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Go Jays! Father Ken who was an Ob/Gyn MD turned Jesuit Priest is cool.

 

[Prehealth1011]

Residents are the only ones who replied to my cold emails. A lot of this is probably luck

Actually an attending did one time. But their project was gonna take years and wasn’t useful for my purpose. The resident understood right away that I needed to publish asap