What's more important - Research in primary field of interest or publication in any field?

[PerfectMD]

Hi all,

At my school, we have a research pathway which does exactly as it sounds. I'm currently trying to pick my advisor and trying to align the person with my interests: which are ortho and cardiology.

I am more interested in ortho than cardiology at this time but I'm still only an M1 and who knows what I really like yet.

Anyhow, I want to be as competitive as possible for ortho if that's what I someday choose to pursue. But I have a chance to work with a cardiologist who seems to pump out publications like nothing. I want this research pathway to lead to some type of publication. So, if down the line its ortho and not cardiology for me, will my cardiology research be that much less favourable than Ortho research?

Thanks.

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[Ole_Toe]

The general advice to this question is pursue research in the most competitive field that you may way to apply for. In this case I suppose that would be ortho, but I would be a bit worried about spending time on ortho research that may not yield multiple publications. the field is so competitive right now, and my understanding is that you really have to get those publication numbers up.

To answer your question, the cards research won't help you much for an ortho application, but it is better than no publications at all.

 

[Redpancreas]

Hi all,

At my school, we have a research pathway which does exactly as it sounds. I'm currently trying to pick my advisor and trying to align the person with my interests: which are ortho and cardiology.

I am more interested in ortho than cardiology at this time but I'm still only an M1 and who knows what I really like yet.

Anyhow, I want to be as competitive as possible for ortho if that's what I someday choose to pursue. But I have a chance to work with a cardiologist who seems to pump out publications like nothing. I want this research pathway to lead to some type of publication. So, if down the line its ortho and not cardiology for me, will my cardiology research be that much less favourable than Ortho research?

Thanks.

If you want Orthopedic Surgery, you need Ortho publications.

If you want Cardiology, you can do a few posters/abstracts and get into an strong IM residency that will set you up for cards (assuming your grades/scores are where they should be for Ortho).

/endthread

 

[srirachamayonnaise]

Publications trump everything else, regardless of which field they are in. Your goal as a med student is to crank up those numbers.

 

[Lawpy]

Publications trump everything else, regardless of which field they are in. Your goal as a med student is to crank up those numbers.

I wouldn't say regardless. Having specialty specific research matters a lot for derm + surgical subs.

 

[Lawpy]

Hi all,

At my school, we have a research pathway which does exactly as it sounds. I'm currently trying to pick my advisor and trying to align the person with my interests: which are ortho and cardiology.

I am more interested in ortho than cardiology at this time but I'm still only an M1 and who knows what I really like yet.

Anyhow, I want to be as competitive as possible for ortho if that's what I someday choose to pursue. But I have a chance to work with a cardiologist who seems to pump out publications like nothing. I want this research pathway to lead to some type of publication. So, if down the line its ortho and not cardiology for me, will my cardiology research be that much less favourable than Ortho research?

Thanks.

It'd be better to focus on ortho research and scale back if you're no longer interested in ortho rather than focusing on IM fellowship research and last minute scrambling into ortho research

Cards research imo only really starts to matter in IM residency onwards

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Publications trump everything else, regardless of which field they are in. Your goal as a med student is to crank up those numbers.

This isn’t entirely true. Certain specialties, mostly the competitive ones like surgical subs, want pubs in their field. And some of them will essentially ignore pubs in other fields.

 

[GoSpursGo]

Hi all,

At my school, we have a research pathway which does exactly as it sounds. I'm currently trying to pick my advisor and trying to align the person with my interests: which are ortho and cardiology.

I am more interested in ortho than cardiology at this time but I'm still only an M1 and who knows what I really like yet.

Anyhow, I want to be as competitive as possible for ortho if that's what I someday choose to pursue. But I have a chance to work with a cardiologist who seems to pump out publications like nothing. I want this research pathway to lead to some type of publication. So, if down the line its ortho and not cardiology for me, will my cardiology research be that much less favourable than Ortho research?

Thanks.

If you really want ortho, you need to find ortho research, full stop. Simply having "research" in ortho won't cut it either, you need to publish there.

 

[aldol16]

For any competitive specialty, publications within that specialty are viewed more favorably than publications outside the specialty. Sure, pubs in general mean that you are academically oriented and curious but it isn't going to be very interesting to a neurosurgeon what the latest trials say about SGLT-2 inhibitors in people without diabetes. They'll be more interested when reviewing your application when your research is in their field because they know more about it.

Research within the field is also important because it allows you to connect with potential mentors and build that mentorship relationship. That's going to be very important in any small, competitive field. It's less important for IM. So knowing a famous cardiologist isn't going to get you anywhere if you're going into plastic surgery. Unless that cardiologist is married to the chair of the department you want to end up at - joking.

So the answer you're going to get is it will be best to do research in the competitive specialty and get papers out of it, which I think is then better than doing research in the competitive specialty without publications (you'll most likely be getting at least some posters out of it - at least you should, if you're aggressive about submitting to conferences), which is better than out-of-field research.

 

[ConstantlyFailingUp]

piggybacking on this thread

How does impact of the journal matter for the publication? I'm shooting for a mid to high tier academic IM program to set myself up for a fellowship, should I be just going for output numbers or would 3 publications in lesser known journals not really matter? (1 first author, 2 2nd author)

 

[Lawpy]

piggybacking on this thread

How does impact of the journal matter for the publication? I'm shooting for a mid to high tier academic IM program to set myself up for a fellowship, should I be just going for output numbers or would 3 publications in lesser known journals not really matter? (1 first author, 2 2nd author)

Pretty sure it varies by program and having a paper in a major, high impact journal will likely be viewed favorably. But that's really hard to do unless you're at a top school working for a powerhouse researcher. So in general, impact factor may not matter that much.

 

[GoSpursGo]

piggybacking on this thread

How does impact of the journal matter for the publication? I'm shooting for a mid to high tier academic IM program to set myself up for a fellowship, should I be just going for output numbers or would 3 publications in lesser known journals not really matter? (1 first author, 2 2nd author)

Everything is a spectrum, there is no "right" answer. The other problem is that when you start a project, you likely will have no clue how high impact it's going to be. You don't want to just do 10 case reports, but in general shooting more shots overall allows you a better chance to have an impactful project.

 

[Phloston]

Hi all,

At my school, we have a research pathway which does exactly as it sounds. I'm currently trying to pick my advisor and trying to align the person with my interests: which are ortho and cardiology.

I am more interested in ortho than cardiology at this time but I'm still only an M1 and who knows what I really like yet.

Anyhow, I want to be as competitive as possible for ortho if that's what I someday choose to pursue. But I have a chance to work with a cardiologist who seems to pump out publications like nothing. I want this research pathway to lead to some type of publication. So, if down the line its ortho and not cardiology for me, will my cardiology research be that much less favourable than Ortho research?

Thanks.

You're in MS1, so even if you think you're interested in ortho, you actually don't know that yet as you haven't had broad enough experiences yet. Just do the cardio research, get some pubs, and if you don't like it, then be like, "Ok, well that was good experience and now I know for sure that isn't for me. And hey, cool, I have papers now just in case."

 

[Browns99]

Publications trump everything else, regardless of which field they are in. Your goal as a med student is to crank up those numbers.

Sorry, but absolutely not true for all specialities.