 So do you actually need research in med school? All right, guys, what is going on? Luxury for an empty journey, helping you succeed on your medical journey with less stress. This video, we're gonna be talking about everything research, which is do you need it? How much do you need? How do you get it? How do you balance it with a busy, hectic medical school life? I get it, I've been there. So we're gonna get right into the tips, but really quickly at the very end of the video, I will be talking about a free giveaway that I'll be doing. So stick around to the variants that way you guys know how to enter for the prize. But let's start with the main question, which is do you even need research? Is it even necessary in med school? The answer is definitely if you're wanting to go into something competitive. Radiology, plastic surgery, dermatology, radiation oncology, those are definitely fields from the very start, even if you have a remote interest in those fields, I would definitely consider do research and start doing it early. One, that way you can understand if you're even learning and doing research about those topics. And two, it's gotta help your residency application. So definitely if you're considered something competitive, even if you're not considering something competitive, if you're just doing something like primary care, ask yourself if you wanna go into a very competitive city or competitive academic program. Those will be two factors for sure, where you would want to have some research on your application. So if those two fit, make sure you start also getting research done early. So number two is okay, fine, I have to do research, but how much do I need? And I'll point you to a really helpful resource, which I'll link down below, but it's called the charting outcomes. So most of you guys know that the match process is how you get selected for residency. And here in the United States, we collect a lot of data, we're just dorks. And in that charting outcome, so it's released about every two years and it's free, you can just Google charting outcomes 2018, find the specialty or specialties you're interested in and you'll get a lot of info for all applicants that matched and did match into that specialty. You could figure out their grades, how much community service they were doing, how much research experience they were doing. This is what we're talking about here. So look into the specialty that you want to potentially apply to and see how many research experiences somebody who got in to residency had. Now, one caveat I will say about this is that your research experience doesn't mean research publication or result. So it may just be something like a poster and abstract. They may also just include research experiences that didn't actually lead to a result. So keep in mind that if you look at a specialty and it has like nine research experiences, that doesn't mean that they had nine publications, okay? But it gives you a number of how many experiences that you should shoot for. And you can get all of this under like one mentor and work on multiple projects or you can find and start dipping your hands into multiple different projects and do multiple specialties. It's kind of what I did if you're not sure what area of medicine you're interested in. So use the charting outcomes to kind of figure out worst case scenario. You may be considering three different specialties, pick the most competitive one that has the most research requirements and start going for that number roughly. Obviously you want quality of a quantity, but quantity does help over not having any research experience at all. So start getting that ball roll. Number three is when should you start, how do you get it? So the when, I would definitely recommend your first semester of med school to not, I repeat, not attempt to do research. This is the time that I find really optimal to perfect your studying as well as your time management skills. You don't want to start adding extra curriculars your first semester and then realize that you don't have studying and time management under control because then you're gonna have to back off on those and it's gonna look more unprofessional and harder to kind of jump back in. So instead, perfect your studying the first semester and understand how you study well, take off the nonsense strategies that you don't really get benefit from, manage your time better, understand how you do that and then use that extra time and try to get research experience your second semester. Now let's getting into how you get research. I would definitely recommend you create a template, a template email and find about 10 to 20 different labs or professors or faculty members that you would like to work with an area of interest to you. And a good way to decide who you should contact is a couple of things. Obviously you want to have a project you're interested in. Two, you wanna see how frequently and how much does that lab or faculty member publish. Working with somebody that only publishes once every several years may not be as beneficial as somebody working in a lab that's very research minded and very academic in getting a lot of publications done. Cause then you as a student will start getting a lot of abstracts with your names on and a lot of publications as well and the opportunity to work on projects independently. So I would definitely look up your PI that you work with just Google them, research gate them and seeing when was there a most research publication as well as like how frequently do they publish. But come up with a list of somebody you're comfortable with working with and a topic you're interested in. I'll link it down below, but create a template where you're talking about who you are, your availability and your interests and see who responds, set up meetings with them and then choose one of them that chooses you back. So that would be my way of getting research experience. The thing to remember about med school is that you can work on multiple research projects at once. So this gets into my next point which is what kind of research should you do and I highly recommend that you do a clinical project versus a basic science kind of lab bench project where you kind of have to be somewhere on a scheduled time to run an experiment. Those are amazing projects and they're really important but for a med student a time commitment can be really tricky. Versus a clinical project those include things like chart reviews, writing review articles, doing like chapter reviews and edits, things of that sort where it can be very quick, remote to work on your computer and you can just start putting out product. The other great thing about working on a research project is that's clinical, is you'll be able to work on one project and maybe it slows down. Maybe you're working on the idea but somebody else is collecting the data for you. In that case you can start looking into asking your PI like do you have another project I could work on or looking into another faculty member you could work with. That way you can start balancing a lot of different projects at once. I think at one time I was doing three to four projects where I was writing the methods, finished it and then I started writing the discussion. I started collecting the data for one of them. So you have your eggs in a lot of different baskets and that helps to ideally get a publication, ideally get an abstract or presentation out of one of them and you can add those to your applications making you more competitive for residency. So be okay with starting to work on multiple things and the clinical project really helps with that. The last part of the video I wanna talk about kind of what things to keep in mind and my most important tip that I'll give to you if we're doing research is over deliver under a promise. So what I mean by that is when you're talking to your PI you're trying to come up with timelines and deadlines for things. So let's say you're writing a discussion for a paper. Tell them you haven't done in five weeks but realistically in your head you know you can get it done in like three. That gives you an extra two weeks up for time in case things get hectic, you know you procrastinate, whatever it may be. But that way even if you turn it in five weeks perfect you're on time, you turn it in four weeks look like a stud, you know a stud. If you turn it in three weeks man you just you know you're just blowing them out of the water. So you look more impressive if you exaggerate your timeline and your deadline. They know you're busy as a med student. So that way you can take that to your advantage and say okay like I can do this for you but it's gonna take me X amount of time and reality doesn't. And so it's gonna help you do better on your research as well as look more impressive to your PIs. And then they're gonna be more encouraged to have you on other research projects because you're able to put out results according to your deadlines. So definitely take that idea of over delivering and under promising. But that's it for all these videos. I know it's a lot of content but I was trying to just give the meat of what you need to know for research in med school. So quickly review, yes you need research especially if you're wanting to do some competitive or an academic setting. Definitely look into getting some clinical projects and use the templated manner of getting your exposures. Be okay with working on multiple projects at once and starting to balance them and make sure that you over deliver and under promise. So hopefully this video was helpful. Quickly let's get to giveaway which is most of you guys know if you're my subscribers, every month I give away one lucky subscriber if not a few more. One of my books as well as my free video course for free. So if you're interested in getting my books and my video course for free, just go ahead and obviously you have to subscribe to the channel but then comment down below with any question you have at all about medical school, your pre-med journey, wherever you are and I'll pick one lucky winner. Last time I made this on a video only three people took me up on it and I think most of you guys didn't think I was serious but I picked one of them and they had a 33% chance of winning. So if you want an easy win potentially just comment down below with one question. Make sure you like the video and make sure you subscribe to the channel. But that's it for this video. Hopefully you guys enjoyed it. So again, quickly reminder, like the video, subscribe to the channel and comment down below with any questions you have but I will see you guys in the next video. Take care my friends.