Getting Involved in Research: Practical Strategies for Medical Students

Hi everyone. Thank you so much for joining the webinar today. My name is Maria and today myself and my colleague Dr. Hao-Hua are going to talk you through getting involved in research with some practical strategies that we think are really going to help. Before we start, there is a pre-session survey. We would be really grateful if you could scan the QR code and fill this in. Steph is very kindly going to put that link in the chat as well. This is just to help us as educators to see what you know already and how it is going to change over the course of the webinar. Do not worry if you have not scanned the code. The link will be in the chat for you to start filling in. Thank you. So just some disclosures to start with. Myself, Hao-Hua, and two of our colleagues or co-authors, Aaron Qi Yang Goh and Hao-Kai Wu, wrote a book on leadership skills for medical students. The reason that I mention this is because we are going to be drawing on many of the topics that we talk about in the book today to try and help you with your research journey. I will introduce Dr. Hao-Hua. He is a spine surgeon and assistant professor in the US at UC Irvine. He has worked and trained at lots of big institutions in the US. His main interests are global health, spinal surgery, and medical education and medical leadership. And now to introduce myself. My name is Maria. I am a doctor working in London in the UK. My big interests are medical education. I do lots of teaching wherever I can to whoever will listen to me. Leadership, particularly medical leadership, and a bit of fiction writing on the side, not going anywhere yet, but maybe in the future. I combined all three of these passions to write this book on leadership skills for medical students that we are going to share part of with you today. A little bit about my journey. I did my medical school at Barts and the London school of medicine dentistry in London. Then I did my foundation training, the first two years in the UK, or otherwise known as an internship in other countries. After that, I did a year teaching medical students as well, and now I am training to be a GP or family medicine doctor. I would like to start by getting a bit of your views on research. Thinking about research and getting involved in research as a medical student can make people feel really apprehensive, and that is definitely how I felt when I was first starting out. If you are happy to, scan the QR code on this slide and it will take you to this poll and just answer the survey and see how you are feeling. Or you can go to slido.com, which Stephanie is going to put the link in the chat, and enter the code at the bottom. Let us know what you are thinking and how you are feeling. I can see people are starting to answer, which is great. I will give it a little more time. Okay, brilliant. Most of you feel excited about getting involved in research rather than worried. That is really positive and it means we can build on it and help you succeed in research and in your research goals. When you think about getting involved in research, are there any barriers that come to mind? Any challenges or things that you struggle with? Please share. It is on the same slide as the previous one, and you can type in a few words or a word that represents the barrier or the challenge that you feel. Knowing what to do is a really big struggle for lots of people. Starting, how to begin, where to begin. People have spoken about teamwork, which we will touch on today. Lack of knowledge on where to start. We are going to give you a step-by-step framework using leadership skills because leadership is so important in research. Time is also a difficult one. We agree, and we are going to give you strategies on how to keep up the motivation to create the time. Why does getting involved in research feel so difficult? These barriers include a real knowledge gap and a perceived knowledge gap. Feeling like you do not know what you are doing, including imposter syndrome. Lack of time. Choosing a supervisor and choosing a project. Feeling like you have to publish for specialty applications. Struggling with rejection. Figuring out authorship, including who should be first author, second author, and so on. In terms of the learning outcomes today, we will talk a lot about unspoken skills. There are many resources you can read about methodology and statistics, and we will not focus on that because those are things you can learn with the right supervisor and the right team. Instead, we will focus on what people do not talk about: how to find the right research mentor. How to build research relationships using positionless leadership. And how to tackle imposter syndrome. So over to you, Hao-Hua, to talk about your research story. Fantastic. Sorry for being late. I wrapped up with clinical duties and I am really excited to be here coming to you from California. I work at UC Irvine in Southern California. I am an orthopedic surgeon and I do spine surgery. My training included University of Pennsylvania for medical school, UCSF for residency, and a spine fellowship at Harvard before coming to UCI. What I will share is my journey to where I am now as a professor leading my own lab, and also how I got started. My first publication was in 2016. I first started medical school as part of the entering class of 2012 at the University of Pennsylvania. I began reaching out to mentors and had questions as a first-year medical student. I sent emails, but nothing really stuck. Eventually I found a mentor who guided me through a project. The project took three years as a prospective study looking at depression and ACL surgery outcomes. I had to attend pre-operative screening early in the morning on some days, screen patients, enroll them, and do an exam as part of the study. I was responsible for data collection, data analysis, and manuscript writing as well. We finally got it published in 2016. Fast forward to now, about 10 years later, productivity has picked up a lot. The beginning is hard, but once you build skills, especially connecting with other people, your ability to do good work grows exponentially. So what we will teach you today is not just how to collect data or which statistics to run, but how to find the right mentorship and assemble the right team around you so you can do great research and tackle major healthcare problems. Thanks for sharing that, Hao-Hua. In my research journey, I did my intercalated degree, an extra year in UK medical school to do a different degree related to medicine. My dissertation research project was in medical education and something I was really enthusiastic about. I did the interviews, the research, wrote the paper, and made the mistake of choosing the wrong supervisor. The experience taught me a lot, but it was extremely frustrating. The supervisors were unresponsive, did not reply to emails, did not help with the work, and only edited a couple of sentences. After I had done so much work to get the work to publication, my supervisor essentially said that they wanted to be first author even though I had done essentially all of the work. The paper is now published, but it was a difficult time. A lot of what I learned is built into this talk so that hopefully you do not make the same mistakes I did. The first step to getting involved in research, the step nobody really talks about, is knowing your why. Why are you bothering to get involved? Why do you want to do it? It might seem basic, but it is crucial. Many people launch into projects without thinking about why they are doing it, and they lose motivation halfway through. Knowing your why helps you keep going. You already know this to an extent. You have studied through exams, stresses, setbacks, and challenges because you know why you chose medicine and why you want to be a doctor. The same applies to research. We would like you to listen to a video by Simon Sinek about starting with why. People do not buy what you do. They buy why you do it. So think about why first, not just what. We would love to hear your thoughts on the poll: what is your why for getting involved in research? If it is hard for you to articulate your exact words, that is normal. It takes practice to articulate your why. Once you have it, it is the fire that keeps you going through setbacks and challenges. It also helps you find time, because you make time for something that matters to you. When you reach out to mentors, start with a why statement. Share a bit about yourself and what you are passionate about. That makes it more likely that the person you are reaching out to will respond. This is step one. Hao-Hua, over to you. Fantastic. Now we will talk about finding the right research mentor and project. My approach is grounded in leadership principles. This is leadership principle number two: finding the right mentor. People often say ?find someone who is good,? but they do not get specific about what traits to look for. In our book, we outline mentor archetypes you can look for. The three mentor types highlighted in green are the selfless mentors, ambitious mentors, and matcher mentors. Selfless mentors enable your success. They learn more about you and find ways to help you succeed. An example is a mentor who, after hearing your interests, connects you to the right project, funding, or opportunities without you having to ask. Ambitious mentors have a track record of productivity, such as publications, talks, or other visible outputs. They are valuable because they help you take the next step with practical advice and often connect you to projects with a high chance of publication. Matcher mentors recognize your effort. If you put in enthusiasm and hard work, they match it. They respond quickly and support you in a way that reflects your investment. There are also mentor types to be cautious about, highlighted in orange: the busy mentor, the prefunctuary mentor, and the narcissistic mentor. Busy mentors do not have the time to carve out support. They may be great clinicians, but they may not be the best research mentors for you if they cannot provide the bandwidth needed. Prefunctuary mentors do mentorship because they are told they have to. In academic settings, it can improve promotion metrics to show mentorship activities, but the support may lack enthusiasm or be overly general. Narcissistic mentors make themselves look good but do not help you look good. If someone is demeaning, calling names, or speaking badly about you, that is a warning sign. As you interact with mentors, keep these archetypes in mind. Next, we will talk about building research relationships and the skill we will teach is positionless leadership. Positionless leadership means you exert leadership no matter where you are in your journey. You do not need a formal title. Leadership is the ability to influence others to achieve a goal. Think about people above you, at your level, and below you. How you lead different groups varies based on hierarchy. When you are reaching out for research, the principal investigator may have the final say, but students often can lead by directing the team toward the right research question, publication path, or data focus. Your feedback can provide fresh perspectives and move projects forward. Strategies for leading upwards include: Lighten your leader?s load by handling tasks early, such as submitting abstracts on time with everything prepared. Invest in relational chemistry by building trust through appropriate one-on-one interaction. Be prepared for your mentor time by coming in with clear questions and goals. Know when to push and when to back off, especially when schedules or call duties affect responsiveness. Leading across your peers means collaborating rather than competing. Share opportunities and advice rather than withholding them, which helps everyone be more productive. Leading downwards means recognizing contributions. In an operating room, you rely on a team with different expertise. The same idea applies to research: recognize value in everyone around you and place people in their strengths. Now we move to tackling imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist despite evident success. You may still feel like a fraud or question whether you really know what you are doing. There are many strategies to tackle imposter syndrome: Reward yourself for every success, including milestones like ethical approval, completing write-ups, and submitting. Adopt a growth mindset and remember the journey is for learning. Let go of perfectionism and accept that good is good enough. Open up and talk to others, especially mentors and seniors, because many people experience it. A powerful strategy is analyzing your internal rule book and reframing unrealistic expectations. Cognitive behavioral therapy highlights that how you think creates feelings, feelings create behavior, and behavior creates thoughts. If your rules say you should never make mistakes, you may avoid opportunities and lose learning experiences. If you reframe it as ?mistakes help me learn,? you will seek opportunities and learn more. The goal is confident humility: you do not know everything, but you are eager to learn, you ask questions, and you can be wrong and improve. Now, final tips from experience. Do a literature review so your idea has not already been done to death. If it has, you can still approach it from a new angle. Plan before you start. Get ethical approval early if needed. Discuss authorship early and clarify roles. Keep your why alive and protect research time each week so the work does not get pushed aside. Keep multiple draft versions. Take feedback seriously, including reviewer feedback after submission. Check author guidelines for formatting, word limits, and requirements. Look out for conferences and remember research is not only publication; presenting and networking matter. Rejection is normal. Keep trying. To summarize: knowing your why, finding the right research mentor and project, building research relationships through positionless leadership, and tackling imposter syndrome are the key steps. Lastly, we briefly touch on our book, Unlocking the Leader Within. It covers a leadership curriculum, including topics relevant to research such as navigating strong personalities, building good habits, avoiding burnout, and responding to setbacks. We encourage you to take a look. There are QR codes and a feedback form link in the next slide. The form includes purchase links and a sample chapter on adaptability and responding to setbacks. Thank you so much for listening. Feel free to get in touch at unlockingtheleaderwithin.com. We would be more than happy to take questions. Yeah, fantastic. Thank you so much, everyone. We are open to taking questions now on the chat. We received a question about authorship positions. For medical students, being first author or middle authorship matters, but last author is usually reserved for the principal investigator, your research mentor. For professors, first and last author positions are often the most important. Knowing this helps you navigate authorship order and expectations when assembling a manuscript. Next question: pointers for people entering research, including potential PhD or MD roles, especially in Canada. Start with your why and identify which sub-specialty or field you are most passionate about. What are you willing to stay up late nights to explore? If you narrow it to something specific, such as hip dysplasia, search for experts in Canada in that area. Consider the region you want to be in, then narrow further. PubMed often provides corresponding author email addresses. Conferences focused on your topic can also help you network with potential mentors. Another question: how to participate in international research groups. If remote research is the plan, it is more challenging, so you need to communicate well and be on time. Respect other people?s time and focus on how you add value. International collaboration can also happen through regular meetings, shared writing, and topic-based coordination over time. A final tip is to work with people you enjoy working with, because it makes the work much more enjoyable and sustainable. Next question: what to do when a PI leaves you undelivered for a month and then comes back when it suits them. It depends on the task. Ask what you can control. If you can take steps yourself, do so. If the PI?s lack of responsiveness leads to a need for rework or blame, that can be a mentorship red flag. It may be appropriate to change mentorship. If other students are involved, reach out to them for support and advice. If you are stuck, ask for help early. Another question: websites to improve research writing. Look for an article you want to emulate and study its structure: abstract, introduction, methods, results, and conclusions. Then get other people involved in reviewing and giving feedback, such as supervisors, colleagues, or seniors, since they can spot issues you might miss. Next questions included how to get into research positions in Canada and differences between home-institution opportunities and outside opportunities. When emailing people you do not know, be clear on your why. Keep the email concise but impactful and attach your CV. If possible, meet people in person through local conferences, talks, webinars, and events. If you are outside your home institution, make sure your outreach shows thoughtfulness: show you have read their work and you have your own idea or clear interest in guiding a specific research question. This helps you stand out. Finally, conferences: look for local and national conferences, and also field-specific conferences that match your area of interest. Submit abstracts even if you think they are not perfect. Opportunities may include scholarships or financial aid for trainees. Getting an abstract accepted can unlock further networking and additional opportunities. If you are interested in more webinars like this, we would love to hear from you. Maria, do you mind sharing the contact info from earlier? Yes, sure. You can email unlockingtheleaderwithinmail.com or reach out to Steph, who has been moderating for us. Thank you to everyone who joined. Keep doing what you are doing. The healthcare field has many challenges, but at the end of the day you are helping others. Many people are lucky to have you as their healthcare providers. Help others. Focus, learn, retain, and thrive. Learn more.