welcome back to another episode I'm your host EC RG thank you guys for
listening today I've got another question for you from a viewer or
podcast listener and they wrote in saying hey EC RG I am a fourth year
medical student graduating in July / August and would love to get into
clinical research before residency and also do it while in residency please I
would appreciate your advice on how to go about doing this thank you and of
course they leave their contact information so if you've got a question
similar to this individual but you'd like for me to answer you can email me
elite clinical group at gmail.com or you can text me under in the links in the
description I do have my phone number there if it's not under this video it
will be under some other videos if you're listening on YouTube and if
you're listening on the podcast go listen back to some of my past podcast
and the number will be in there so this person is requiring about how as a
medical student / resident can they get involved in clinical research so I'm
really glad that you asked this question because this is a unique question and
one that is not often asked but I think more and more people will start asking
it as you know depression rates increase for doctors and people just realizing
that you know going to med school may not be for them and practicing medicine
in that way may not be for them so how would they go about going into clinical
research so the first thing you asked is about residency and this is easy if you
go to a research university so apply for your residency at research universities
some programs and some universities actually require that you do clinical
research so they'll add on an extra year for you to do clinical research to your
residency program now of course this is good if you're interested in research so
for you I would definitely look at programs that either require you to do
clinical research or definitely help facilitate you doing clinical research
and you'll most likely do clinical research as a sub investigator
so a sub investigator is underneath the principal investigator and they may help
like take vitals see patients from time to time do those type of things or
anything that they're delegated to do on the delegation of authority log you know
they might look at lab results and sign off on those too but eventually after a
number of years so investigator you'll be able to be a principal investigator
you know after you move up and go on your own way after you graduate a
residency and you've done a few years of clinical research you'll be able to
become a principal investigator because of your experience as a sub investigator
so that is probably the easiest way to go about doing clinical research for you
is just go and be a sub investigator while you're in residency and then it'll
be easy for you to get more studies as a PI and a sub I in the future because
you've already had that clinical research experience now the hard part is
being able to do clinical research you know kind of in between residency so
what I recommend is for you to check out a position called a medical science
liaison this is a position where you work for a pharma company or a biotech
company and you know this is not gonna be affiliated with a hospital anyway but
look up that position it's a really really good position you know it's gonna
be in the private industry and this is actually what a lot of people do when
they are when they are interested in not practicing medicine this is a great
alternative career path for if you have your medical doctor degree but you do
not want to practice medicine just I would look into that too I think you can
also do research years after you graduate medical school too a lot of
people will do that in between residency like if they don't get in to the
residency they want they will do research years so that's always an
option - but if you do want to practice medicine and go into residency my advice
for you would be to just go ahead and apply for programs that do facilitate
that and will allow you to do research while you're doing
see and apply for those also while you're in medical school you can also do
clinical research but though the type of clinical research that you're going to
be doing is not gonna be as probably going to be more like data-driven
researching and analyzing data from previous studies that were done in doing
meta analyses and things of that nature so they're not going to be the actual
clinical research where you're seeing patients well it's likely not going to
be that type of clinical research where you're seeing patients and doing drug
development so I would just keep that in mind also but you're on the right path
you're gonna have a medical degree so that will be unique and you should
definitely definitely definitely be able to get into clinical research and then
the last position you need to be made aware of is the medical monitor position
which you know sites ask questions to they ask questions to the medical
monitor about different patients and inclusion exclusion criteria you know if
their numbers aren't right they can ask the medical monitor if they'll allow
them in the study the medical monitor will look at the protocol and look at
the idea behind the protocol and use their best medical judgment to determine
if they should be in the study or not they do a lot of other things too but
that's basically the gist of a medical monitor that position is also working in
the pharmaceutical industry not necessarily for a hospital but you know
it's a great role so there a number of roles out there for a medical doctor who
wants to get involved in clinical research those are just a few and
because of your background I would definitely suggest being a sub I after
you're done with medical school so if you have a question that you're
interested in having me answer email me Ali clinical group at gmail.com you know
where else are you gonna get someone in the clinical research field to answer
your questions so go ahead and email me here also guys if you're interested in
having your resume reviewed you can email me Ali clinical group at gmail.com
or any type of interview prep if you are having a hard time breaking into the
clinical research industry or wanting wanting to change jobs in the clinical
research industry or wanting to just get to the next level in the clinical
research industry I can help you out email me Ally
clinical group at gmail.com take care guys