PhD vs MD/PhD

[EngineerMedic]

I am an undergraduate that is on the fence about medical school.

My career goals lie in research, but I feel torn between either attempting MD/PhD program or simply trying PhD program. If I were to do MD/PhD, it should take an extra 2 years to get MD, plus another ~3 years for residency, so I could expect what effectively totals to 5 extra years of training compared to PhD. However, I think that earning the MD would prepare/qualify me for more and different types of research than the PhD alone.

If my username didn’t give it away, I am most interested in the development and usage of technology in medicine. If I try to oversimplify things a little, I basically see two options. The option for which the PhD would best prepare me would be research that develops novel technologies based on relatively well-established medical research. The option for which the MD/PhD would best prepare me would be more clinical, studying things like the medical response to emerging technologies. Although the second path would take a bit more training, I understand that it would give me more breadth in the types of experiments and fields of research I would be trained to work with.

This leaves me with two questions for the reader:

1. How accurate are my thoughts on this matter? Am I oversimplifying too much, or making naive assumptions?
2. What do I need to know as I begin choosing between the two options? I am not asking you to tell me what to do, because you cannot know me well enough for that based on a short post on the internet. I hope instead to get an idea of what each path would look like, and some advice on what I should consider as I start to make decisions around this.

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[phonyreal98]

The oft-repeated advice on this message board is to only do an MD/PhD program if you want to be a doctor- that is, if you think you would be happy with being primarily a physician if it came to that after the MD/PhD program (because, for better or for worse, it often does).

My question for you would be how much clinical experience do you have, both in terms of patient contact and in terms of seeing what a doctor does on a day-to-day basis? If it's little or none, I would recommend getting more clinical experience so you can make an informed decision. If you already have a lot of clinical experience, then think about whether or not you would be happy being primarily a physician.

 

[EngineerMedic]

The oft-repeated advice on this message board is to only do an MD/PhD program if you want to be a doctor- that is, if you think you would be happy with being primarily a physician if it came to that after the MD/PhD program (because, for better or for worse, it often does).

My question for you would be how much clinical experience do you have, both in terms of patient contact and in terms of seeing what a doctor does on a day-to-day basis? If it's little or none, I would recommend getting more clinical experience so you can make an informed decision. If you already have a lot of clinical experience, then think about whether or not you would be happy being primarily a physician.

Thanks for the reply! That seems like very sound advice. To be honest, I have basically no clinical experience. What would you consider the best place to start?

 

[jesie]

I think you're approaching this in a smart way.

I don't think clinical experience is going to make this that much clearer for you. It's just accepted around here as a cure-all for uncertainty in career choices. Shadowing was one of the most boring experiences for me. I couldn't stand a whole lot of it. It's good to do so you know what you're getting into, but the experience you have shadowing gives you such a limited picture as to what it would be like to live the life of the person you're shadowing.

You may love problem solving...who likes watching problem solving while acting polite and feeling out of place?

Being compassionate and reassuring could be your greatest talent...does watching someone talk to a patient then tell you whether or not you belong in medicine?

It comes down to the skills you want to have on the other side of it all. Want to be known as a no-nonsense researcher? PhD is probably the smartest way to go. Proper or not, MD/PhDs often receive pretty significant bias from other researchers who perceive/judge them as being partially-trained because of the short PhD, among other factors.

Tl;dr- odds are you know what you want to do, but have been given too long to think about it, just like many of us are