There has always been an expectation that research in medical school will be a part of your eventual residency application. And not only is research an expectations, there is generally an expectation that you will also participate in some kind of scholarly activity such as submitting a publication, abstract, and/or poster presentation. While you won't be expected to conduct research or have scholarly activity to the volume that a PhD or postdoc student might, now that COMLEX Level 1 and USMLE Step 1 are pass/fail, its been hypothesized that residency program directors are going to start to place more emphasis on research and scholarly activity (along with the results of COMLEX Level 2 and USMLE Step 2) in the selection of residency applicants to interview. We don't yet know if this will be the case, but in the next year or two, we should have a firm handle on this. In the meantime, how would a medical student go about seeking research opportunities in medical school?
The simplest way to get some research experience would be to maintain any existing research connections/collaborations with undergrad and/or graduate research labs. For example, when I was in my PhD program, I started working with Dr. Melva Thompson-Robinson at UNLV during my research practicum and I continued that relationship through the COVID pandemic and into medical school. Its resulted in a textbook chapter, three peer reviewed journal articles, three webinars, two poster presentations, a fourth peer reviewed article that has just been submitted, and a fifth peer reviewed article that my wife and I are working on now. I'm also currently working on turning my dissertation into several first author peer reviewed journal articles, and I presented a poster at the 2021 AMA Research Challenge and I will be presenting the following poster at the 2022 Beyond Flexner Alliance Conference at the end of the month.
What do you do if you do not have these existing research collaborations though? You'll have to start looking at your medical school (or lovcal medical schools) to inquire about research opportunities.
You first want to understand what research is available at your school and then determine if it fits your interests and future specialty plans. If you do not care so much for laboratory research projects, look for faculty who are doing community and public health realted work, clinical research studies, epidemiological studies, retrospective studies, or case studies. These experiences may be more interesting and they have the benefit of being relatively quick as compared to laboratory bench research. If you decide that you want to do research, you need to speak to the primary investigator and you need to be super clear about the time committment and expectations they will have of you in relation to your work as a medical student. Do not forget, your primary purpose in medical school is to graduate and become a doctor. You do not want to fail out because of your time being taken by extracurricular activities. Sometimes it can be hard to find a good PI or research opportunities that you may be interested in. You should speak to upperclassmen and graduates of the school in addition to looking at the website. Once you have committed to a project, ask about the opportunity to produce some scholarly work from the project. Make sure to get a clear understanding of authorship in the case of papers, abstracts, and/or posters. Lastly, if you find that you like research as much as I do, you might consider taking a gap year in medical school to do a research project or you may even want to pursue a research-based masters or doctoral degree.
Now that I am thinking about specialties, I need to start thinking about getting a research project that aligns with that. I've identified a project at Highland Hospital in Oakland that I would like to do as it would be a perfect way to show continued interest in emergency medicine and primary care. I also have a growing interest in gastroenterology and clinical research, so I may seek a bench research project in GI physiology at UTSA or something. Decisions, decisions, decisions!
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