Is there such a thing as a school that doesn't require legwork for research?

[Sandman23]

I keep hearing that schools, everywhere from Carle to Quinnipiac etc, will require you to find research on your own. Isn't that the case at every school? All med schools have profs & I can understand these profs aren't doctors and even the ones who are docs will not always be into pumping research. So then, do you not have to find research on your own if you have a school with a dedicated research program? I'm pretty sure OUWB has that and A&M does too. But both are trashed for lacking research - or at least requiring students to find research on their own. If that's the case, I don't see how any school would NOT require students to find research on their own.

Feels like a very broadly applied criticism, either because the benchmark is set high or because students always have to find their own research. I don't think someone would comment this of WashU, Vandy, etc bc they prestige might blind the fact that both WashU and A&M have research programs - so why the criticism for one over the other? I'm sure WashU's infrastructure is more built out but the criticism would be more relative ("you sometimes have to find research on your own") rather than "you WILL have to find research on your own"

Hope I'm making sense. Can definitely understand how I might be naive on the topic - but ain't no perception gonna intercept my question....and that's bars 😤

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[LizzyM]

I highly doubt that any medical school hands a research project to a medical student and says, "here you go, this is your research project and this is your mentor." I think that schools vary in terms of the amount of research that students can be involved in (some research at medical centers consists of industry sponsored clinical trials of new treatments for patients and what needs to be done and the process for being included in the work really preclude involving students). Most schools will have some kind of directory either with a contact person in each department that one can contact for more information about research going on there, or a listing of specific faculty members and a brief description of their "shop" and the research opportunities for students. In some places, you may have an advisor who can serve as a matchmaker between faculty who have projects and students interested in a particular kind of research. Your best bet may be to talk to current students on interview day or at second look and ask if they have been involved in research and how they found the project(s) they've engaged in.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Geez... at least you don't have to find your own patients.

Research doesn't drop into your lap like buying a turn-key house or a car.

There should be an office for student research to help connect you with possible PIs. You won't be totally lost.

 

[Sandman23]

I highly doubt that any medical school hands a research project to a medical student and says, "here you go, this is your research project and this is your mentor." I think that schools vary in terms of the amount of research that students can be involved in (some research at medical centers consists of industry sponsored clinical trials of new treatments for patients and what needs to be done and the process for being included in the work really preclude involving students). Most schools will have some kind of directory either with a contact person in each department that one can contact for more information about research going on there, or a listing of specific faculty members and a brief description of their "shop" and the research opportunities for students. In some places, you may have an advisor who can serve as a matchmaker between faculty who have projects and students interested in a particular kind of research. Your best bet may be to talk to current students on interview day or at second look and ask if they have been involved in research and how they found the project(s) they've engaged in.

Makes sense, makes sense. I did hear that Carle lacks those clinical trials. What exactly would a med student do within a clinical trial? Essentially the work of a part-time CRC? I have no context to know, just educated guessing

 

[AJS59]

FWIW, some schools (i.e. Miami, where I'm going) sort of integrate research into the curriculum through "scholarly projects" or concentrations - it's not guaranteed to churn pubs but it's something.

 

[Goro]

Makes sense, makes sense. I did hear that Carle lacks those clinical trials. What exactly would a med student do within a clinical trial? Essentially the work of a part-time CRC? I have no context to know, just educated guessing

Numbers crunching

 

[LizzyM]

Students don't generally get involved in industry sponsored clinical trials. The FDA has tons of regulations and the team members have to be registered with the IRB, spend hours in training, have a CV on file, and so forth. Most of the work is done in conjunction with clinical visits (history & physical, blood work, diagnostic imaging, ECG, etc) plus pill counts, pill and symptom diaries, & questionnaires. Data tends to be sent to the sponsor for analysis.

What I was trying to say was that some schools have a ton of clinical trials but don't lend themselves to student engagement so they shouldn't be considered in the mix when figuring out if a school has lots of research opportunities for students.

 

[pazzer2]

Students don't generally get involved in industry sponsored clinical trials. The FDA has tons of regulations and the team members have to be registered with the IRB, spend hours in training, have a CV on file, and so forth. Most of the work is done in conjunction with clinical visits (history & physical, blood work, diagnostic imaging, ECG, etc) plus pill counts, pill and symptom diaries, & questionnaires. Data tends to be sent to the sponsor for analysis.

What I was trying to say was that some schools have a ton of clinical trials but don't lend themselves to student engagement so they shouldn't be considered in the mix when figuring out if a school has lots of research opportunities for students.

Fully agree with LizzyM. I'm an MD in the pharma industry and I've never seen a medical student get involved in an ongoing clinical trial.

But there are some circumstances where retrospective analyses of clinical trial data can be done. This can be done without all of the FDA and GCP paperwork headaches mentioned above. In fact most pharma companies will let you analyze their clinical trial data. As long as you have a legitimate scientific question they'll allow you to conduct analyses. Most of the pharma companies have setup data repositories for their clinical trial data:

YODA: Yale Open Data Initiative (Janssen)
Vivli
ClinicalStudyDataRequest.com

There are others too.

 

[Sandman23]

Students don't generally get involved in industry sponsored clinical trials. The FDA has tons of regulations and the team members have to be registered with the IRB, spend hours in training, have a CV on file, and so forth. Most of the work is done in conjunction with clinical visits (history & physical, blood work, diagnostic imaging, ECG, etc) plus pill counts, pill and symptom diaries, & questionnaires. Data tends to be sent to the sponsor for analysis.

What I was trying to say was that some schools have a ton of clinical trials but don't lend themselves to student engagement so they shouldn't be considered in the mix when figuring out if a school has lots of research opportunities for students.

Ohhhhhh, that explains a lot. I'm so naive on this subject, it really shows

 

[Sandman23]

Fully agree with LizzyM. I'm an MD in the pharma industry and I've never seen a medical student get involved in an ongoing clinical trial.

But there are some circumstances where retrospective analyses of clinical trial data can be done. This can be done without all of the FDA and GCP paperwork headaches mentioned above. In fact most pharma companies will let you analyze their clinical trial data. As long as you have a legitimate scientific question they'll allow you to conduct analyses. Most of the pharma companies have setup data repositories for their clinical trial data:

YODA: Yale Open Data Initiative (Janssen)
Vivli
ClinicalStudyDataRequest.com

There are others too.

What's in it for these pharma companies to make their data open access? Do they set conditions on them reviewing the analysis before it's published? And can someone request this through the regular contact pathways or is there a particular person within pharma companies that would be best to ask?

 

[pazzer2]

What's in it for these pharma companies to make their data open access? Do they set conditions on them reviewing the analysis before it's published? And can someone request this through the regular contact pathways or is there a particular person within pharma companies that would be best to ask?

There was a lot of pressure from academia, physicians, FDA and the general public about 10 years ago.....many negative studies were buried and never published. So they all started programs to share their clinical trial data.

But its actually been good. Academia can access huge datasets for post-hoc analyses, and many interesting findings have sprung out of all of the analyses.

Generally anyone (even a medical student) can request access to the datasets. You need to have a legitimate scientific hypothesis and data analysis plan. They do not need to review/approve the results before publishing. But they do need to review the plan/hypothesis beforehand. Start with the links that I posted above. Each of the websites has its own rules and policies about how to request the data.

If you have an interesting hypothesis, it is entirely possible to do a post-hoc analysis using retrospective clinical trial data. Just need to assemble the right team (statistician needed usually, along with faculty members) to get it published. Here is an example of a recent publication from the YODA data sharing website (Janssen): Association of proton pump inhibitor use with survival and adverse effects outcomes in patients with multiple myeloma: pooled analysis of three clinical trials

 

[Dragonite7]

I think you're taking statements too literally. Yes, you will always need to do some work to start research. However, powerhouses like WashU, Yale, etc. have such a wealth of projects available that it's a lot easier to get involved in a project that fits your interests. You can look at the difference in research funding between these schools (don't take those numbers as definitive rankings but moreso loose approximations). There are also cultural differences between institutions in how receptive professors are to students joining their labs. Do they usually agree or ghost students? This is more ambiguous and subjective, but that's sometimes what people are getting at when they say you have to do a lot of legwork to find research. To summarize, you're not going to be completely cut off or handed research at any school but the ease of getting started definitely varies. I think that if you work hard, you can be successful at almost any school.