Abstract
To pursue research, education, and health policy in one’s career, broadly defined as academic medicine, is one of the most important decisions of a trainee doctor’s career. Despite this, there is scant literature on which factors influence trainees’ choices towards clinical work or academic research. As the MD/PhD is a relatively young training path compared to the traditional PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) and MD (Doctor of Medicine) programs, it prompts the question: at the crossroads of a career, what sways the individual to select an MD, PhD, or MD/PhD program? This is a valuable question to be answered for trainees who are considering multiple career paths, for educators who want to guide undifferentiated students, and for policy makers who develop and coordinate research programs. “Intellectual stimulation” is the most consistently identified personal value which draws trainees to academic medicine. Mentorship is linked strongly to success in the field. Conversely, long training periods, a lack of autonomy, and financial considerations are deterrents from a career in academic medicine. Insight into the decision-making process is provided by recent Canadian trainees in these respective fields, in a series of short interviews.
Highlights
To pursue research, education, and health policy in one’s career, broadly defined as academic medicine, is one of the most important decisions of a trainee doctor’s career
This PhD student has since continued his research career as a postdoctoral research fellow, and plans to work towards a professor position at a research-intensive university. He commented that not having an MD and its related training have posed some limitations to his work, as he can not readily recruit patient populations without first finding an MD with relevant background and interests to collaborate with. While he does not think that everyone interested in obtaining an MD would be better suited with a MD/PhD, he does think that scientific literacy is an important skill for MDs, and that becoming involved in a research laboratory at the undergraduate level should be encouraged for students considering a medical career, even if just in volunteer capacity
Multiple studies and focus groups have tried to characterize the values and reasons behind the relative lack of trainees and mentors who are women in academic medicine[11,12,13,14]. This warrants further attention as women likely share the same personal values as their colleagues who are men, that will draw them to academic medicine, yet additional deterrents have been identified within this group
Summary
Any reports and responses or comments on the article can be found at the end of the article. 1.2 – MSc prior to entering MD program This trainee stated that undergraduate experiences in research inspired her to attain a Masters degree, especially in a gap between undergraduate completion and application to medical school She later chose to pursue an MD degree as she did not envision scientific research forming the major component of her career. He commented that not having an MD and its related training have posed some limitations to his work, as he can not readily recruit patient populations without first finding an MD with relevant background and interests to collaborate with While he does not think that everyone interested in obtaining an MD would be better suited with a MD/PhD, he does think that scientific literacy is an important skill for MDs, and that becoming involved in a research laboratory at the undergraduate level should be encouraged for students considering a medical career, even if just in volunteer capacity. A PhD in philosophy would help this physician formulate those questions to be more clear, meaningful, and effective
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