Md/phd Program Or Phd In Residency?

[Mike.B.]

I want to do a PhD but I don't know when I should do it.

 

Im going into second year and our school offers an MD/PhD program where you do a PhD between preclinical and clerkship and then will graduate with a MD and a PhD when you're done.

 

Or I have heard of people doing a PhD in their residency (they are given time to do this and paid as a resident). However, I have never actually talked to someone who has/is doing it.

 

So if you have experience with or know someone who has done either I would love to hear what you have to say and if you think one is better than the other, why you think that.

 

We also have a combined MD/MBA program where you get the MBA in between preclinical and clerkship, but this only takes a year. My idea currently is to do the MBA and then in residency do the PhD, however I was talking with my PI this morning and now I'm honestly not sure how to go about this whole PhD thing and would like to hear about other peoples experiences.

 

[ralk]

What do you hope to get out of having both an MBA and a PhD with your MD?

[Mike.B.]

What do you hope to get out of having both an MBA and a PhD with your MD

 

I'd have both research and business education, make me more versatile with what I could do later on. Also I have always wanted some business education, and with the opportunity to get an MBA in a year with the combined degree program I think I would kick myself for not taking it.

[A-Stark]

Take a few steps back.

 

Do you know what you want to do, i.e. what specialty? If you don't, I'd suggest talk of a PhD let alone an MBA is grossly premature. Lots of people do masters degrees during residency; PhDs are less common. You don't need a PhD to be a researcher - though it helps - but you do need to do said PhD in a field relevant to your clinical specialty.

 

Otherwise, why do you want an MBA? It doesn't really make you more "versatile" unless you want to go into health care administration... and it can always be done later when it's a clearer part of your career path. No point in getting a(nother) degree for the sake of a degree.

[ralk]

A-Stark's getting at why I asked the question - when (and if) you do these degrees depends entirely on what you want out of them.

 

If you want more education period and more letters behind your name, doing the MD/MBA then PhD in residency sounds fine, but it's not going to open a whole lot of doors for you that your MD on its own won't. To the small extent that either degree will individually help your career, they'll likely do so in completely different ways, so why do both? Especially now in the infancy of your medical career, a lot of that training will go to waste if you don't plan on using it any time soon, even if you pursue a career path that could benefit from one of those degrees.

[oshaku]

Be careful before jumping in to a PhD. It's a huge time commitment. What do you want to do the PhD in? As in what sorts of projects do you have in mind? How much research experience do you have? Unlike medicine or UG, there is no hand-holding in PhD programs. PhDs are very unstructured and require a lot of self-direction, so you need to be sure you're comfortable in that sort of environment.

 

My own cautionary tale is I went in to a PhD thinking that I'd like to get a PhD (the degree) rather than the specific project/problem I wanted to tackle, and had the worst time of my life. In that experience I realized people don't do a PhD for the sake of having a PhD. People do a PhD because they have a question and nobody in the world knows the answer.

[Edict]

Yeah, no point getting a MBA or PhD. Maybe a PhD if you intend on having a clinician-scientist career but I think its more useful if you did that during residency which would mean your PhD would be directly relevant to your specialty.