MDPhDs.org

Increasingly, the tabloids (i.e. Science, NEJM & Nature) are providing excellent editorial pieces on career choices.  After catching up on some reading this news years, I’d like to recommend a few articles for those pondering their career direction as a physician scientist.

In September, JAMA published a largely descriptive study on MD/PhD program graduates, their career intentions, and other survey questions.   They were interested in the relationship between career intentions at graduation and subsequent career performance, accomplishments, and evolution.  The results aren’t groundbreaking, but it sets the stage for long-term evaluation of the joint degree program as a way to compare it to the alternative paths to becoming a physician scientist.

>>> Read the JAMA article “MD/PhD Programs–A Call for an Accounting” (zip file floating around internet or JAMA original)

(more…)

Perhaps you’re nearly finishing your MD/PhD interviews.  Or perhaps you’re getting ready for a busy January and February visiting potential schools.  Either way, preparation is key. As my basketball coach once said, “Prior practice prevents poor performance.” So, here are some sample questions that you are likely to encounter on the interview trail.  Preparing for these questions with mock interviews with your friends, graduate students in the lab, or a career counselor will certainly help you prepare for the big interview.  Remember, it just takes one school.  Good luck.

1. Describe your research.
2. Why are you interested in a combined program, versus one or the other?
3. Describe your solution to the US Health care crisis.  Is Obama/McCain’s solution likely to work?
4. What can physician-scientists do to contribute to your solution for the US health care crisis?
5. Have you had any leadership positions? Please describe your experience.
6. Do you follow or learn more about cancer biology through texts or primary literature?
7. Please tell me about 2 articles in the past year that were most exciting to you.
8. Tell me your knowledge of the research I am currently involved in (rare: only if you chose the specific investigator). 
9. Role play: Act like I am a 5 year old child who has cancer and explain what is wrong with me.
Explain it as though I am the child’s parent. Alternate: explain to an adult patient they have a terminal disease.
10. What do you feel is your greatest accomplishment?
11. Why would you convince someone not to pursue medicine? Despite these reasons, why are you
pursuing medicine?
12. Why are you interested in our MD-PhD program, in particular? Alternatively, tell me everything you know about this program.

P.S. We are interested in comments from blog readers about other good questions that interviewees could benefit from. Comment posting requires registration (in order to prevent boat loads of spam–sorry).

The academic advisors in the deans offices of our country’s medical schools and the public health directors looking to admit medical students who will work in under served rural areas have long pondered how to predict a medical student’s specialty choice.

Can the senior faculty member read students in an admissions interview?  Can your academic advisor help figure out which specialty will be most fulfilling for you?  Can a personality test predict which specialty or research field you’re best suited for?

After taking a Myers-Briggs test recently, I came across a field of literature dating back to the 1950s about physician specialty choices.  And nobody has looked at the difficult decisions of how to balance the career of a physician scientist using these crude tools.  But some interesting insights came out of this.  First, my personality type INTJ is associated with being a biomedical scientist/researcher (yeah!).  If you know your type, check here for career matches, which include medical specialties.

One problem with the conclusions from the Myers Briggs data doesn’t seem to hold up with time.  In the academic literature, this results in statements like “predictive validity of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator should be reexamined.”  Some of this data goes back from the 1980s, and the nature of the professions have changed considerable.  Moreover, it doesn’t tell us if these people made the correct choices–just that they made a choice based on their personality type.  It would be interesting to look at satisfaction rates based on the personalities types, perhaps within a single specialty.  But that leads to the last problem: statistics.  The ratios are pretty weak because they researchers tackled an enormous question with just a few thousand people.  And personality type is far from deterministic.

Where else might this head?  Another quote from a Family Medicine journal article from 1985 indicates this is not a new idea: “This information may be useful in health manpower planning and in examining admissions policies of medical schools and residencies.”  But since this hasn’t happened in the last 20 or so years, I think this will have to remain a pipe dream for those sensing, feeling types.

P.S. I’ve included a brief chart on specialty choice.  For example, Child Psychiatrists are more likely to be NF (two of the 4 letters from a Myers-Briggs) than the other options.  Also, I would be interested in comments about how this relates to the MD/PhD student.

From Gersher.org