Letters to the Editor
Another Clinical Research Secret
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 Heme/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 conduct-
ing 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 figu-
rative 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 op-
portunities 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 fel-
lows 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 men-
tor 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
In the December 2016 Editor’s Corner (“So You Say
You Want to Be a Clinical Researcher?”), Mikkael
A. Sekeres, MD, MS, offered advice for fellows and
trainees who have set their hearts on becoming
academic hematologists, including finding a good
mentor and being a “short order chef” who has
projects on the stovetop constantly simmering.
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
Mikkael A. Sekeres, MD, MS,
is director of the Leukemia
famous researcher’s lab, but that
Program at the Cleveland Clinic
researcher ignored her email. So
in Cleveland, OH.
she sent that researcher 30 emails
in a row with the same request,
reasoning that he couldn’t avoid
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 col-
league 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 method-
ology, 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 inter