Editor ’ s Corner
So You Say You Want To Be A Clinical Researcher ?
P
ERHAPS YOU ’ VE JUST FINISHED your hematology / oncology fellowship a year or two ago . Or you ’ re still a fellow and , having completed that intensive first year of inpatient consults and the speed dating outpatient rotations in different specialty clinics , you ’ ve just woken up to the realization that you have to apply for jobs in a year . Or maybe you ’ re a really motivated resident and have already been labeled as that “ hem / onc ” gal or guy by the drones in your training program who decided shortly after they developed the fine motor skills to hold a compass that they wanted to become cardiologists . ( Remind them that they ’ re about to dedicate their lives to studying a single muscle . Whatever .)
And suppose you also know you want to be an academic hematologist or oncologist , but have recently discovered that wet benches give you hives . Or maybe you realized this as far back as medical school and get really jazzed at the thought of conducting research that involves large populations or directly benefits individual patients ( as happened with me ).
But the path to becoming the next Rich Stone , Eli Estey , Wendy Stock , Alan List , Stephanie Lee , or Alan Burnett ( to name just a few of my heroes ) seems a murky one , indeed .
Then this just might be the essay for you . Come , take my figurative hand , which I recently excoriated with repeated exposures to alcohol-based disinfectants while on service , as we review Ol ’ Doc Sekeres ’ fail-proof tips for clinical research success !
Tip # 1 : Find a good mentor . Anyone who tells you this without providing you with concrete assessment tools for what constitutes a “ good mentor ” is , by definition , not being a good mentor to you .
Good mentors help develop interesting research questions , provide clear guidance without telling you what to do , create opportunities for you by removing obstacles , and put your interests first , especially by making time for you .
Sounds easy , right ? Not so much . These people are hard to find , and you ’ ll have to make a judgment call if you identify someone with some , but not all of these traits .
Start with word of mouth . If you ’ re a resident , ask fellows at your institution . If you ’ re early in your fellowship , ask senior fellows or faculty you trust . Most people aren ’ t eager to badmouth another person , so pay attention to hesitations before people answer you or neutral responses .
Do a PubMed or Google Scholar search . If a candidate mentor does not have a proven track record of publishing him or herself , it is unlikely he or she has the skills to mentor another person in research .
Look for a mentor with senior author publications in which trainees or junior faculty are first authors . If many publications have trainees as middle authors , and the potential mentor is first author , this person will not put your career development ahead of his or her own .
If a potential mentor does not answer your email requesting a meeting to discuss a project , or it takes weeks to arrange an appointment , this person is too busy to mentor you , or he or she is not interested in mentoring you . If it takes a lot of effort to engage someone with this first step , it will take a lot of effort throughout a project .
I trained with someone who really wanted to work in a famous researcher ’ s lab , but that researcher ignored her email . So she sent that researcher 30 emails in a row with the same request , reasoning that he couldn ’ t avoid
Mikkael A . Sekeres , MD , MS , is director of the Leukemia Program at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland , OH .
her email if 30 copies of the same one filled his computer screen . For anyone not paying attention , this is an example of exerting too much effort to engage someone .
Tip # 2 : Personality matters Let ’ s face it : You don ’ t want to spend the next couple of years , or couple of decades , working with someone ( be it a research colleague or mentor ) whose personality doesn ’ t complement your own or whom you don ’ t respect . If your stomach turns every time you think about meeting with an individual or a group , it ’ s time to reassess your career direction .
I knew I had found the right mentor in medical school when I walked into his office and saw a life-size poster of the character Kramer from Seinfeld hanging on his wall . I knew it in fellowship when I discovered someone who had the same Borscht Belt sense of humor as me , as did others in my chosen field . Now , both also fulfilled all of the other qualities of outstanding mentors . But I can honestly say I looked forward to seeing these people , and others in hematology , all of the time .
Tip # 3 : Define yourself by disease interest or research methodology , and sometimes both . I found , early in fellowship , that I loved interacting with my patients who had myeloid malignancies , and I loved the research questions that these diseases spawned , be they clinical trials , epidemiology of risk factors , development of prognostic tools , quality-of-life assessment , understanding decision-making , or the clinical intersection with genomics . It ’ s what I call my acquired , adaptive , research ADHD .
Others identify themselves by their research skillset , and may be gurus in , for example , working with SEER-Medicare data , and don ’ t particularly care what disease is the focus of the week . A rarer subset have a disease and a research methodology focus and might , for example , concentrate on patient-reported outcomes in non-Hodgkin lymphoma . Any one of the above models is fine ,
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