hi so today I going to do a whole video on how to get more involved in research as a Premed and as a medical student I feel like a lot of schools don't really emphasize how to go about getting into research you know they they're very good about telling you that research is really really important as you set up your applications for residency or for medical school but I don't think anyone really talks about actionable practical steps you can take to get more involved in research and get more involved in productive research research that is
going to get you publication especially as admissions becomes lot more competitive for residency and for medical school research is such a strong way to stand out it is such a good way to build a narrative around yourself and to make a strong argument to show that you're actually interested in the things that you are saying that you're interested in these are all the tips that help me get more than 13 projects my first three years of medical school and that was before I started my research year these 13 projects do include manuscripts as well as
poster presentations but when you're applying to a lot of these applications they for on eras or on cast a lot of times they get grouped into one thing sometimes as bad as it sounds it really does become a numbers game having more helps you stand out more for those of you who are new my name is Monica I finished my third year of medical school a few months ago I took step two and now I'm currently my researcher and I also make content to help preds and medical students kind of navigate the field of medicine
first things first find faculty that are doing research in your area of Interest two things that I want to say about this when you find faculty you don't want to immediately just cold email them cold emailing is great there is a time and a place for it but it's not in this moment when you find this faculty the first thing you want to do is go on pubid and see how much they have published and when they published all their projects if this person has not published anything in the last five years I would even
go so far as to say if they haven't published anything in the last year move on find someone else you want someone who has a track record of being productive and they have a track record of having published a lot of peers and frequently ultimately it helps you set yourself up for Success secondly when you find a productive research faculty you don't want to just ask them if you can hop on a project a better way and I promise you a much more productive way of going about this is to pitch them an idea and
now you're going to be sitting there and you're like what do that sounds great where do I come up with these ideas the whole second half of this video is me talking about how to come up with your own ideas for research projects but now I want to talk about why pitching is such a better way of going about it rather than just cold emailing and asking to be put on Project reason is that when you pitch your own idea it one looks like you're so much more motivated you're bringing them a topic rather than
having to have them come up with something for you thing is that you remove the brunt of responsibility from the other person having to do more work and think about projects for you or involve you in a project instead you make it easier for the other person to respond CU a lot of times Cold emailing needs to no responses and the reason for that is because you've just put so much responsibility on this person who doesn't know you and have them come up with projects for you or come up with ways to involve you in
a project versus if you present them with an idea a wellth thought out idea and again second half of the video where I kind of delve a little deeper into how to go about doing this it increases your chances of somebody responding to your email secondly when you pitch an idea or a research project the biggest thing that you want to make sure that you're emphasizing or really thinking through is how your research is going to contribute to the existing body of literature never want to just pitch an idea and not know what has been
written about it or around that topic you want to make sure that You' have done a very solid literature review to see what's already been written and then make an argument for why your project particularly is going to add more to the existing literature rather than just regurgitate what's already been done it's so important that you aren't wasting your time doing a project that's already been done because that's effort that you put in but you're not going to get anything out of it so my third tip it's okay not to really fully know how to
do a literature review it's okay not to know how to do data analysis chart review any part of the process it's okay to not know how to do but what's important is that you're always willing to learn and you show that you're always willing to learn I want you to approach research and contacting a mentor from the standpoint of everything is figure aable and I can figure it out you can communicate and you can be honest about what you don't know with your Mentor you can tell them that you don't know how to do this
but the one thing that makes mentors really take you seriously is when you communicate that you know how to figure something out that you might not know it yet but at least you'll take a stab at figuring it out you're not just like I don't know it help me it's more like I don't know it but let me go back let me do my search let me tell you what I found based on the work I've already done and then you have the other person tell you and advise you on how to go about it
differently or or approach it differently or where they can make tweaks again shifts the Brun of responsibility from them to you and makes it so much more likely that a person wants to work with you now for the question that gets asked so often how do you come up with research ideas my favorite tool for coming up with research ideas chat jpt and PubMed I will literally take any topic so in my research here I'm doing a whole bunch of projects on cutaneous ank so what I'll do is I'll look up a drug that's used
quite often like I'll see in clinic patients are on this drug quite of it I'll go to pmid and I'll just see what's been published about this drug so far then I'll copy and paste like the first 15 to 20 search results into chat GPT and basically ask it to tell me what hasn't been studied about this research project what are the gaps in our understanding what are the gaps in our knowledge about this drug easier to do this with Niche topics cuz you'll get fewer results and so it's easier to just input those results
into chat rather than getting like 800 hits on something but if you just ever want to narrow your topic down pick a patient population you could think okay so for example the drug example that we used I could just say okay tell me more about the use of this drug in women or tell me more about the use of this drug on patients who are concurrently on this other medication or in our existing literature about this drug and patients who have this and this comorbidity or this kind of immunosuppression or organ transplant or you know
the list goes on and on you just need to find one thing that helps you narrow your search ask chat GPT to tell you where the gaps and knowledge are once you get started it is so much easier to keep going and to finesse your searching and to really get good at figuring out what you can do and where you can really contribute to existing science but you just have to be able to again approach this with the mentality of I can figure this out let me just see what is out there all right the
last tip that I will mention is networking gosh people need to like emphasize netw workking more and also whenever I got advice about networking it was a whole bunch of you know go to conferences and that's where you'll find people always go to this conference go to that conference I'm like what if I don't have $500 to spend on conference attendance so if you like me don't have just $200 to $500 to spend on conference attendance find people online literally did a project from someone I found on Twitter which that paper not only ended up
getting published but that Mentor then helped me get into my researcher at Harvard so it just ended up being such an incredible opportunity and all from finding this person on Twitter so make use of any Avenue or network that's available to you and it doesn't require a huge financial investment always ask people if they can introduce you to other people or who might be doing a project or who might be looking for someone for a project or who might be more interested in the project that you're pitching so always always make use of your network
and keep thinking about growing your network that brings us to the end of this video I hope this was a helpful informative video any questions that you have and the comments below and I'll try to address all of them and I might even make a second video to kind of delve deeper into this if that is something of Interest research has become such an important way of distinguishing yourself and I think it's a disservice to not fully understand how to be a productive researcher especially in the field of medicine thank you so much for joining
me today make sure you follow me on Instagram and I'll see you guys in my next video bye