How to Organise Research



How to Organise Research

This advice will attempt to highlight the important considerations for an SpR considering an out of programme time for research training.

To do research or not to do research?

The logical first decision is whether or not to “do research”. This is not in itself an easy decision as often you are committing to a 2-3 year period away from clinical training with no guarantee of success. In addition, you may have no intention of being involved in any way in research later in your career and there may be significant financial.implications. Despite that, research provides an excellent opportunity to develop a serious subspecialty interest and to spend time on a subject related to respiratory medicine that interests you.

|Pros |Cons |

|Develop a subspecialty interest |Time away from patients |

|Develop an aptitude / interest / obsession in your chosen subject|Waste of time for you, your supervisor and your funder if not |

| |truly motivated |

|Confidence discussing and interpreting clinical science | |

|Perceived positive effect on job prospects (essential for | |

|aspiring academic physicians, nearly essential for teaching | |

|hospital consultants) | |

Having decided to pursue a period of research training….what are the issues?

• A choice to spend 2-3 years of your life on research is a major decision and you should put an appropriate amount of effort into determining what the best project / supervisor / lab /hospital for you is. Compare it to other major career decisions like when you decided to do respiratory rather than another specialty.

• Be sure that if you are offered a research post that it is appropriate for you; just because Dr X whom you work for suggests a research project you should not feel obliged to say yes.

• Plan early. It often takes 9-18 months to organize a research attachment so it is key to plan ahead. It is difficult to stress this too much.

Don’t be shy. Most people welcome being approached for advice on research topics / timing / supervision etc; and the more conversations you have with people whose opinions you respect the more informed your decisions will be.

• To convince your potential supervisor to take you on you need to demonstrate bags of enthusiasm and knowledge on your proposed subject area.

• Get your CV into shape. Have people who are involved in research training read it and advise you, and emphasize anything you have done which demonstrates prior interest or involvement in research.

The choice of research training depends on a synthesis of 4 key and inter-related points.

1) Supervisor

2) Environment

3) Topic / Project / Type of research

4) Funding source

Supervisor

a) Are they an acknowledged expert in the research topic? Do they work in a recognized centre of excellence for the subject area? It is important to work with someone who really knows their subject and has demonstrated this by publishing in decent journals (assessed by impact factor) and being invited to speaker at international meetings.

b) Have they supervised students before? If so what is the feedback? Are they supportive and interested or absent and disinterested? How many other students is the supervisor supervising simultaneously – some like being part of a big team; others prefer to be more “individual”.

c) Personality. Do you respect this person? Will you get on with them? It is not important to be mates but hugely preferable if you like and respect them.

d) Scientists. Good doctors may not necessarily be good basic scientists or clinical researchers. If going for a basic science project you should consider working with non-clinician scientists who may offer a very different perspective.

e) Non-respiratory. A lot of the BTS / BLF Young Researcher of the Year prizes in recent years have been awarded to individuals working in labs which have no direct links with respiratory departments. Cast your net wide. Think outside the box…and other clichés!

f) Their plans. Are they intending to move to Australia in 18 months; what plans have they for their own career / unit?

Environment

a) If it is a bench project, is the lab well funded? are there research staff who will be able to train you in the required techniques and help you with problem-solving? and is there easy access to any specialist facilities required.

b) With hospital based projects it is important to ensure the necessary patient cohorts are readily available and that ethics permission is established well in advance of any start date.

Research Topic

You will not be expected to have a detailed plan for your MD or PhD when you meet a potential supervisor, but you would be expected to have an idea of what interests you. The main choice you have to make is between doing a lab-based or a clinical project.

In all cases, when you are going to chat to a potential supervisor make sure that you have a clear idea (via Pubmed searches for their publication and asking around) about the focus of their research.

Project

The key issues here are

a) Is it feasible; does it make sense; is there a better than even chance of success?

b) Will you get publications from it? This is the most important marker of success. You may not be able to answer these points but you will know people who can – use them.

c) Is it novel? What are you trying to do which is new or will add new knowledge?

d) Will you be trained in new clinical or research techniques? Will you be expanding your skills repertoire? Will this mark you out as someone with a true subspecialty interest?

e) Is it something which really interests you?

Types of Research (often overlap between categories)

• Bench research e.g. mouse models of disease, cell biology

• Bench research using clinical samples

• Bioinformatics

• Clinical trials - tertiary / secondary / primary care settings

• Diagnostics /Assay Development (Clinical+Bench)

• Public Health / Policy / Guidelines development

• Education

Funding

A complicated area and the source of much misery. The options are:

Personal Fellowships. The best but most competitive method of funding is a personal fellowship from the Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council, or Cancer Research UK. Usually fund basic science or very good clinical science only. Usually requires a good application from a good laboratory with a good project for a good chance of success. Most fellowships require the completion of a large form describing the proposed project and the applicant, followed by selection for an interview. The whole process takes up to 9 months. Fellowships provide a salary and funding for relevant consumables, and come with a lot of kudos. The overall success rate is between 10 and 20%.

University Fellowships. These are exactly the same as those just described but will be funded through a legacy to a particular university for research undertaken there. They are generally considerably less competitive.

Pump-priming Fellowships. Short-term fellowships to allow a candidate to gain laboratory experience, a real understanding of a project and sometimes abstracts or publications or prior to applying for a personal fellowship. Such candidates will often be in a strong position for external (MRC etc) funding. They again tend to be funded by legacies to particular universities or laboratories.

Supervisor / Project Related Fellowships. Many program or project grants have funding for a research fellow for 2-3 years built into the proposal and the post is therefore advertised. The source of funding is varied; either e.g MRC / Wellcome or a particular charity, or from the pharmaceutical industry. Usually, only the latter will pay a salary close to a clinical salary, and will usually be a clinical project linked to a particular drug or therapeutic intervention. Care is required to ensure that the post leads to publications with you as a first author.

“Soft Money”. Many departments have incomes from various sources which go into a slush fund which can be used to fund various activities including potentially your research project. This is an entirely acceptable way to fund your research training. It is important that you get an honest assessment of the likelihood of funding being maintained for the duration of your research. There may be no guarantees and this can add significant stress to your research career. Again, this is acceptable as long as you are fully informed. You need to ensure that there is also money available for the costs of the research project as well as your salary.

References

MRC



Wellcome Trust



(Note applications to Wellcome fall into different streams)

CRUK

collection – varied bunch but some excellent articles



North-East Thames units that may offer research opportunities (not exhaustive, needs constant updating)

* mainly basic science research

London Chest Professor Neil Barnes asthma and COPD

Royal Free / UCL Professor Wisia Wedzicha COPD

Dr Marc Lipman TB

UCLH / UCL *Dr Jeremy Brown (CRR) lung infection / pneumococcus

*Dr R. McAnulty (CRR) lung fibrosis / COPD / cancer

*Dr R. Chambers (CRR) lung fibrosis

*Dr Gary Lee (CRR) pleural disease

*Dr Sam Janes (CRR) lung cancer

*Dr Mike Hill (CRR) molecular genetics

*Dr G Bellingan (CRR) ARDS / lung injury

Dr Rob Miller HIV / TB

Professor Rook TB

Homerton Dr G. Bothamley TB

Also consider other London based units (the Royal Brompton, Kings, Hammersmith) or outside London (Cambridge, Southampton etc.) – you may have to be prepared to travel to do research in an area that really interests you. A good source for inspiration are abstracts at the Winter BTS; if you look through the previous years abstracts that will give you a good idea as to who is doing research in a topic that you would want to pursue.

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