Medical research

[fUNNYfACE36]

Dd2 wants to eventually wants to work in medical research. She is a bright girl across the board and has always been in the top 2 overall in her grammar school class. I understand medical research is a very competitive field.she has toyed with being a doctor but after lots of thought and speaking to and shadowing medics,has decided that she doesn't want tbe continual stress of making a mistake and harming or worse, a patient.
She is not sure what us her best route now?
Any insight?

No idea, maybe something like biomedical sciences?

Standard route would be Bioscience degree, followed by a Masters followed by a funded PhD. Then followed by a succession of low paid short term contracts....

The types of degree subjects that people who I work with vary from biomedical sciences, chemistry, chemical engineering, biology, natural sciences etc. There are 2 traditional routes - you can target getting employed as a graduate (mega competitive) or you can go the post graduate route which these days seems to include both a masters and a PhD (I did latter). Institution matters target courses with a good amount of practical work including a final year project (check syllabus in brochure) and are research intensive in the medical research area. Often good BSc or MSc project students get the best pick of the PhD projects from their institute, it is quite hard to break in as an outsider. More recently there are also some pharmaceutical companies who fund advanced apprenticeships now too.

My dd took the same decision eg medical research rather than medicine ... Shes just finishing Yr2 of an Mbio at Warwick... Her final year (masters) will be a project and then she intends to do a PhD. She'll probably earn low salary but job satisfaction is important to her. There are some jobs where earnings can be more substantial (medical patent field)

Its so difficult trying to get enough work experience but she managed to do some lab work at P&G and shes got an interview for a summer lab placement today (not the field she wanted but shes taken the view 10 weeks paid lab experience anywhere is worth doing).

There's lots of opportunities - DH works in radiotherapy research and was originally a physicist. I'd say she should pick a science degree she would enjoy and then see where it leads her.

DD2 wants to work in medical research for a charity or NGO, preferably abroad. She is following exactly the course recommended by @titchy . She did a biomedical science under-graduate (4 years including a year's placement in an NHS lab), a 1-year taught MSc in control of infectious diseases at LSHTM (lots of her fellow students were qualified doctors looking to add a specialism to their knowledge), and is currently applying for funded PhDs.

Also interesting what @RC1234 says – DD2's Masters project involved original research which her supervisor is aiming to get published. It is definitely that which her PhD interviews have focused on the most.

Does your DD know what area interests her in particular?

I did pharmacology as my first degree, mainly because it covered the topics I was particularly interested in, but if I were advising someone now I'd say biochemistry, cell & molecular biology or genetics might give a better basis for a wider range of postgraduate research careers.
She does need to allow for the fact that she will have to do a PhD (DPhil if at Oxford) to get onto a pathway leading to being an independent (university) or staff research scientist (industry), and many institutions require students to complete a MSc or MRes first, so it's often at least four more years after graduating to even have the basic qualification. PhD positions should come with stipends and with tuition fees paid, but they can be very competitive in prestigious and well- resourced institutions.
It would be worthwhile for her to look at the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industries (ABPI) web site: www.abpi.org.uk/careers/. The School & college studies -> Choices at 18 page will be helpful.

If you graduate with a first class degree, it's possible to move straight onto a funded PHD.

A masters is definitely not a requirement for being considered for a PHD.

People often suggest biomedical science, but having worked in this area in the past I would say the most common degree that people had was Biochemistry.
Or do a broad biological sciences degree with the options to narrow in on her interests after year 1 .

I think she is looking at biology at st Andrews at the moment. I am not sute about the Scottish system where everything seems ti take an extra year.
Med students have told her she can do research from a med degree and yhat woukd be a better route keeping more doors open for her.

Dd applied for same but accepted Glasgow over StA's.
Practical reasons, she already has a flat in Glasgow with her Bf.

@fUNNYfACE36 as the med students have pointed out, she can intercalate a MB PhD. She will have 3 years working on her interests at a top outfit, with possibly publications etc resulting. MB PhDs are now well-established and well-resourced in the UK.

Most MB PhDs edge into the intercalation when their interest in taking the clinical scientist route builds up. Not really what you plan at say 17, though the personality will have been set by then. About 7-8% of a cohort (with an intercalated BSc and likely various conferences etc in hand) will put up for it and about half will be offered, by then most accept if they can find the right project.

It helps to be comfortably self-contained; she will be stepping aside from a well-bonded cohort of 4 years, and then join a new similarly well-bonded cohort for the final 2 clinical years. Graduating virtually debt free is a distraction; research bodies find it cost-effective to fund £100k+ intercalations against funding clinical fellow salaries for the 3 years. The real question may be whether and how she is committed to the base med course. If that is a question, then it will be a long 4 years and another 2 clinical years before and after the PhD. At the end of med school she will be competing at base camp with everyone else. Quite a bit to chew over.

There aren't that many medical schools that offer intercalated PhDs, and they are very competitive. It would be unwise to start a medicine degree in the expectation of doing an intercalated PhD: it's an option that might become available during your medical studies, rather than something you can plan for.

I'd be very concerned about a student who "has toyed with being a doctor but after lots of thought and speaking to and shadowing medics, has decided that she doesn't want the continual stress of making a mistake and harming or worse, a patient" starting a medicine degree. Apart from the fact she'd have to lie to get through an interview at most medical schools, she would be setting herslf up for a lot of stress in the later clinical years, foundation years and core/specialist training. You're not going to be much in demand as a clinician scientist if you're not also practising, and if you want to go into specific areas where you just need the medicine qualification rather than being a current practitioner you'll still have to complete at least the first foundation year to get full GMC registration.

I've know lots of medical students who have gone on to academic training programmes after graduation but they have all been clinically excellent and committed to patient care as well as academically very strong.

With my former STEM admissions tutor hat on, I also wonder whether medical school is the right choice for your DD. She is obviously capable of it, and it is the most straightforward route into medical research. So if she decides it is for her, I definitely hope she will go for it.

But that isn’t the tone of your post. The interface of STEM and medicine is really fascinating: bio-engineering, bio-physics, bio-mathematics, genomics to name a few that I personally know a bit about. These fields are making exciting contributions to cancer research, neurology and numerous other fields. There is ample employment from PhDs to lab techs, though as PPs have noted at the higher levels all science is very competitive. (Positions are less scarce in America and on the continent than in the U.K.). A lot of this research is conducted by teams co-led by consultants/professors at teaching hospitals and university academics.

This is the side of things I am a bit familiar with. Of course there is the whole field of life sciences, to say nothing of chemistry, etc. I believe the same employment considerations hold. There are also a number of Life Sciene Institutes around the world, though the impact of their research on patients is a bit removed.

Big Pharma pays researchers quite well from what I hear! Although one can take issue with the morality of the international distribution of medicines, there is nothing evil about those researchers (and generally no other mechanism for drug development).

Your DD has many options, even if a medical degree does not suit her.

PS Nowadays most who go directly from UG to a funded PhD have done the M version of their subject, eg MChem. This takes an additional year, so four years in England. I am not saying it is impossible to proceed to the PhD from a BSc. But my School and many others no longer accept this, because the funding constraints don’t give students time to acquire enough background

Does she want to do research with patients (eg working alongside doctors in a hospital) or research that ultimately helps patients, eg looking at the genetics of cancer in a lab or studying brain cells with a microscope? Or even epidemiology like mathematical modelling of how covid spreads.

If she wants patient-facing work, a medical degree is useful. Otherwise, it is much better to do Biochemistry or Physiology or Neuroscience or Epidemiology before going on to a PhD.

Can't be that competitive : it's what I do for a living and I don't even have a health sciences degree.

Parietal gave the best advice : what does she want to do day to day? Be at a lab bench pipetting, interview people, help them find best treatment, crunch numbers to understand the truly best treatment, run teams in low income countries delivering community programmes? Modern medical research includes anthropologists, social scientists, statisticians, data analysts, geographers, chemists, geneticists, coders... heck, in my office we have biochem, virus,. bacterial & gene experts. Each of them is extremely specialised and only slightly understands what the others are doing (!).

Most medical researchers are not clinically qualified.

OP her/himself raised MBPhD intercalation as a route to keeping doors open. In response, everyone has offered a pretty balanced and realistic take to the OP, and pointed out aspects to be aware of eg fundamentally question pursuing clinical science when you’re wary of clinical contact, that most if not all are there through serendipity (personality notwithstanding), also be aware of the knowledge level asked in research student applications. My relatively upbeat indicator of the % uptake reflects the time her DD might face that choice as it’s cropping up at more schools, possibly the more established ones are increasing their product lines in the face of the new schools. The numbers tend to be low because I suspect the nature of doing clinical science is a little opposed to that of clinical treatment, albeit driven by the same motivations, hence self-limiting even at the more competitive schools. It asks for a student who is fine with straddling both natures, and compelled enough to take it on. More will become certain at clinical fellow stage. All this requires you to have a medical vocation to begin with. Others had already helpfully elaborated on more well trod non-medical routes. The common thing about all routes is that research studentships are no longer uncommon (especially as we are well-endowed with top universities) so there is always the question of whether post-doctoral jobs have kept pace, or whether visiting students decamp back to their own countries.