Summer research placements

Deciding how to spend your summer holiday is a difficult business. It would be great to go travelling, spend time with friends, and eat and drink well. This, unfortunately, means strengthening the deep and meaningful relationship with an already substantial student debt. The alternative is to get a job; this may be well paid, but is all too often mindnumbingly boring. A summer research placement could be a third option, which not only combines elements of travel and paid work but will almost certainly improve your future career prospects.

In the United States, students need to complete an undergraduate degree before going on to medical school. During the summer holidays of their first degree, most students try to enter one of the many summer undergraduate research programmes that are on offer. These allow a student to spend two or three months of their summer holiday with a research group at some of America“s top universities and medical schools, providing an insight into the cutting edge of medical research. These programmes, which usually provide a financial stipend, serve as useful CV enhancers for when students are filling in those all important application forms for medical school.

In the United Kingdom, few such organised research programmes exist. Those of you who have done BSc research projects may be well placed to continue your lab work into the summer months and get paid for it. If this doesn“t apply to you, you could write directly to a researcher at your medical school, asking whether you could join his or her team for two months to do a research project. Alternatively, you could be really adventurous and apply to a US research group. I recommend this option because it has a number of attractions that I will come to later.

But why would you want to spend your summer in a lab, doing medical research? For me, the most important reason is that it is far more interesting and intellectually challenging than temping as a medical secretary or working in a shop. I acknowledge that lab work isn“t everyone“s cup of tea, and, even for the most dedicated researcher, lab work can be dull. Research is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration; it is the inspiration part that makes it so worth while.

You will probably be working with one of the leading scientists in their field. The advantage of going to the United States, rather than staying in the United Kingdom is that the ample research funding allows superb state of the art facilities, which you would probably not have access to otherwise. Since the research groups are so well funded, your chances of getting a generous stipend are maximised. Not to be forgotten is that this may be your chance to get the words “Harvard,” “Yale,” or “Johns Hopkins” on to your CV.

I was fortunate enough to spend two summers in the United States. The first was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, during the summer holiday after my second year at medical school. I managed to impress my supervisor, who helped me organise a placement for the following summer, at Harvard medical school. I have no doubt that having this on my CV helped me get the preregistration house officer posts that I wanted.

To get the most out of your placement, you probably need to spend almost the whole summer (eight weeks) working. This may seem too long, but time flies. Weekends are spent going out with the other research students, or seeing the city sights. I recommend keeping a week or two free after your placement finishes so that you can do some travelling around the area, or just kick back and relax, before returning home.

You may be aware that it is increasingly difficult to get accepted into a placement in the United States, whether it be a summer research programme or a clinical elective programme, primarily because the demand for such placements is huge. Although most universities are happy to have students from outside the United States working in their departments, many of the research programmes are restricted only to US medical students. Such restrictions are confined to the established programs and it is rarely an institution-wide policy. You will therefore need to write directly to a professor at the department that you want to work in (rather than applying through the research program) and ask for his or her permission to join one of the ongoing projects. Academics are usually pleased that you have shown some initiative and are almost always helpful and accommodating.