Difficulty finding research

[BrockDoc]

So I am currently a PGY-1 and I really want to do a fellowship in GI. I've been trying all year to get involved with research and I am having absolutely no luck. I've contacted practically every attending and even some fellows in the department and I either get no response to the email or sent on wild goose chases. At one point I was given a database and a little bit of guidance and I was really excited, but that turned out to be yet another false start.

I'm really starting to get frustrated and get down on myself. I wasted a bunch of my "easy" months during intern year chasing these false hopes. I really want to do GI and would preferably like to get a spot right out of residency. I don't understand why I am having such a difficult time finding research. I am an american med grad. I am at a tier 2 academic university IM program. I have average to slightly above average Step 1 and 2 scores.

Did anyone else experience such a difficult time finding research? Any recommendations on what I can do differently? Is it even worthwhile applying next year if I don't have anything published? If I do apply next year and get shot down like I expect, does that hurt my chances of reapplying in the future? If I can't get any published, what are some other things I can do to strengthen my candidacy? What are some things people did that didn't match right out of residency, but matched a year or two later?

Thanks. I appreciate any help...

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[Meat Cookie]

You need to do write some sort of paper that doesn't depend on others...seems as though you're the only person that you can depend on to get something published. May be tough to do anything prospective all on your own, how about writing a review article on some GI topic that hasn't been well-covered in the literature and is only written about in case reports? Have you seen any interesting or rare cases? The article could be something like "XXX: a review of 52 cases". Then you'd just summarize the published cases, drawing any conclusions from among them and synthesizing the available knowledge into one "master" paper. I know I look to these types of papers when I want to learn about a rare condition because they nicely summarize all the known cases in one paper.

 

[usatravel]

hi Meat Cookie,
That is a great suggestion.
Is that easy to publish that kind of Review article by our own, as resident?
I guess it will be relatively easier to find an attending to edit the article and publish as co-authors.

 

[gutonc]

hi Meat Cookie,
That is a great suggestion.
Is that easy to publish that kind of Review article by our own, as resident?
I guess it will be relatively easier to find an attending to edit the article and publish as co-authors.

If you walk up to an attending and say "here is a review I've written on X. Could you review and edit it as the senior author?" you'll probably get a reasonably good response. Also, there are a million throw-away journals to publish these articles in so you can get just about anything published these days.