The road to research

As I sat down at the British Society of Gastroenterology's annual conference in Glasgow, my tachycardia was finally subsiding. I was excited and feeling the buzz from having just given a successful presentation—well I hoped so. But how did I get there?

The Manchester medical school training required completion of a three month project option. This included a small research project in an area I was interested in.

My research was multidisciplinary. I worked with several departments in the hospital, including gastrointestinal investigations, radiology, and the university department of surgery. The study entailed using a new device to measure oesophageal lumen diameters during barium swallows. We were looking at new parameters: what was a good swallow and how did it relate to the patient's oesophagitis and history? I made measurements, searched patient medical records, examined endoscopy reports, and determined drug history. It was often an assault course of reports and really bad handwriting.

Back in Glasgow, my head cleared and I started to listen to the next speaker as she took the limelight. I began to see the amount of work that had been carried out. The statistics made sense. I wondered about the questions and methods being used. But was research a future career path? How did it fit into medicine?