Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post

alpo · 04-26-2005, 06:40 PM

That's a good question, and the exact same one I had back when I was getting ready to graduate from college. I think you have to try to decide what you want to do with your career. Would you like to spend your career in academic medicine or would you like to go into private practice? It's tough to figure all that out until you've had some exposure to academic medicine. Back when I was graduating from college in the mid '90's, I was stuck with the same decision that you are facing. Molecular biology was just starting to explode and I had really enjoyed some independent research that I did as an undergrad. I decided to take a couple of years off before going to medical school to "try out" research. After 5 years of research, I finally decided to go back and get that medical degree. What I've found so far in my young medical career, is that a PhD is not entirely necessary to stay within academic medicine and do research. I do say that with some reservations though. You have to try to incorporate as much research as you can into your undergrad and med school years. That's pretty hard to do. The years in med school are pretty tough; there isn't much time for outside activities like research. The final opportunity to do research without doing a PhD is during residency. If you don't do a PhD and want to do research in you should try to go to a residency program that is steeped in academic medicine and research. In my residency program, at a rather well known program in beautiful Baltimore, MD, I'd estimate that about 1/3 of my colleagues have a PhD. There are still plenty of opportunities for the rest of us to do research.

In some ways, I think there are some downsides to having a PhD in medicine. At least in my institution, the MD-PhD folks often get pigeon holed into non-clinical areas. So if you still want to see patients, it is often difficult to do so.

This is a topic I could talk about for quite a long time (I guess I already have). The above represents my thoughts, as someone who opted against getting a PhD.

04-26-2005, 06:40 PM	#2 (permalink)
alpo Tilted Location: Two skips to the left	That's a good question, and the exact same one I had back when I was getting ready to graduate from college. I think you have to try to decide what you want to do with your career. Would you like to spend your career in academic medicine or would you like to go into private practice? It's tough to figure all that out until you've had some exposure to academic medicine. Back when I was graduating from college in the mid '90's, I was stuck with the same decision that you are facing. Molecular biology was just starting to explode and I had really enjoyed some independent research that I did as an undergrad. I decided to take a couple of years off before going to medical school to "try out" research. After 5 years of research, I finally decided to go back and get that medical degree. What I've found so far in my young medical career, is that a PhD is not entirely necessary to stay within academic medicine and do research. I do say that with some reservations though. You have to try to incorporate as much research as you can into your undergrad and med school years. That's pretty hard to do. The years in med school are pretty tough; there isn't much time for outside activities like research. The final opportunity to do research without doing a PhD is during residency. If you don't do a PhD and want to do research in you should try to go to a residency program that is steeped in academic medicine and research. In my residency program, at a rather well known program in beautiful Baltimore, MD, I'd estimate that about 1/3 of my colleagues have a PhD. There are still plenty of opportunities for the rest of us to do research. In some ways, I think there are some downsides to having a PhD in medicine. At least in my institution, the MD-PhD folks often get pigeon holed into non-clinical areas. So if you still want to see patients, it is often difficult to do so. This is a topic I could talk about for quite a long time (I guess I already have). The above represents my thoughts, as someone who opted against getting a PhD.