Dermatology PSTPs

[convolutional]

I have recently started shadowing dermatology and was surprised to find myself really enjoying it. However, my school doesn’t have a home program and talking to some MD only colleagues who applied/matched, these are incredibly competitive. My research is computational/AI stuff that can easily be applied to derm but the disease context I’m looking at is very different.

I was wondering if people had any advice as to how to proceed to maximize my chances of matching? Should I try for clinical research? Should I give up? I would deeply appreciate any insights. Thank you!

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[SurfingDoctor]

I have recently started shadowing dermatology and was surprised to find myself really enjoying it. However, my school doesn’t have a home program and talking to some MD only colleagues who applied/matched, these are incredibly competitive. My research is computational/AI stuff that can easily be applied to derm but the disease context I’m looking at is very different.

I was wondering if people had any advice as to how to proceed to maximize my chances of matching? Should I try for clinical research? Should I give up? I would deeply appreciate any insights. Thank you!

Why do you think that wouldn’t be applicable to different diseases? Also, if you enjoy the research, why give up?

Now if you don’t like research, and would rather just see patients, that’s a different question, but generally speaking, a PhD is malleable enough that you could apply the learned techniques anywhere. It ends up being more of a question of do you want to actually do research as a career.

 

[convolutional]

Why do you think that wouldn’t be applicable to different diseases? Also, if you enjoy the research, why give up?

Now if you don’t like research, and would rather just see patients, that’s a different question, but generally speaking, a PhD is malleable enough that you could apply the learned techniques anywhere. It ends up being more of a question of do you want to actually do research as a career.

I actually really like my research! I think it’s cutting edge and intellectually stimulating and I think it could easily translate to almost any specialty. I’m just not sure if I will be able to match in dermatology with this set of circumstances since I’ve heard that it’s important to have research in the field. I was wondering if people knew how I could try to match despite these circumstances, ie would it be better to do clinical research as well?

 

[SurfingDoctor]

I actually really like my research! I think it’s cutting edge and intellectually stimulating and I think it could easily translate to almost any specialty. I’m just not sure if I will be able to match in dermatology with this set of circumstances since I’ve heard that it’s important to have research in the field. I was wondering if people knew how I could try to match despite these circumstances.

I won’t claim to know the field of dermatology, but even if you did research on topic X, could you foresee how that knowledge could translate to topic Y?

Personally, if I had an applicant who only studied Chinese hamster ovary cells but has a thoughtful PLAN on how they could translate to critical care medicine… I’d be sold.

Again, I’m not dermatology so maybe it’s different, but I’m a sucker for realistic and thoughtful career development plans (probably cause they are a rarity and most people are FOS)

 

[tr]

It might help to post this in the derm forum, they will have more insight into critical factors for matching into that particular specialty.

That said, I always think deeper is better than broader. If you are excited about your research area and you've hit a productive seam, I would advise you to put all your energy towards mining that seam rather than dividing your focus to get some low-impact QC type research on your CV just so you can say it's derm-related.

Put another way, if you are looking for a research-oriented residency, a productive, high-impact PhD in any area would be much more enticing to PDs for research-oriented programs than a marginally productive PhD plus some derm case series or something. Also I understand that quantifiable factors like preclinical and clinical grades and Step scores are really important for competitive programs, and again I would wonder whether dividing your focus among different research areas/mentors might hurt you there as well.

But I also understand from the grapevine that in highly competitive clinical specialties, many top programs don't have a strong research focus. If you have a clinically oriented PD who doesn't know Cell from Plos One, it's possible the above might not apply. That you would need to ask in the dermatology forum.