If you remember only one thing from this podcast, it's don't waste your time on things that do not align with your goals.
Are you a physician who's looking to build your career and be recognized nationally, but is having trouble getting on the program or getting your articles published? Are you having difficulty finding mentors and coaches to help you get ahead quickly? Well, don't spin your wheels or lose out on your personal life. This is the podcast for you.
I'm Stacey Ishman, and I'm the host of the Medical Mentor Coaching Podcast. I'm a full professor who's built clinical research and administrative programs while mentoring and coaching young academic physicians from medical school through their first 10 years of practice. It was not long ago I was in the same boat as many of you, struggling to be known for my area of expertise, feeling like my contributions were lost in the shuffle and unsure how to advance my career.
I spent a lot of time juggling tasks that didn't quite align with my goals or bring any joy. I missed out on a lot of precious moments with my family, but I've had my aha moment, and now I'm all about channeling my energy into activities that truly propel me forward and bring me happiness. Please join me on the Medical Mentor Coaching Podcast as we dive into all things career advancement, finding your niche, and working towards that elusive work-life integration.
Hi there. Welcome back to another episode of the Medical Mentor Coaching Podcast. I'm your host, Stacey Ishman, and today we are talking all things related to research plans.
At the start of your academic career, there's a lot to set in motion. You have to figure out how to set up your office, your templates, your notes, whatever EMR you use, how to meet all the right people, how to get all the right numbers in your phone, and if you're in a procedural specialty, what's on your preference cards? What should your telemedicine look like? Do you want 15 or 30 minutes for a new patient? Do you type when you're in the clinic? Do you only look at people and take some notes? Do you dictate? Do you have a scribe? There's a lot to figure out.
And amidst all this newness and overwhelm, you also have to figure out what you want your research career to look like.
This is the topic I'd like to delve into today, and the goal of this conversation is to guide you in crafting your research legacy.
Now, the most important thing is to determine your area of interest or niche. I can never figure out how to say that, but the key is to figure out where your true passion lies. Now, if you don't really have a true passion or you genuinely like a lot of things, then figure out what you want to be known for or where you want to develop your expertise. If someone was to call you tomorrow, what do you want them to invite you to speak about? So take a minute, search yourself. I'm sure there's an area in which you're already an expert or at least have a great interest.
However, if you do work in a lot of areas in your first decade of your career, it's hard for you to become known. It's hard for people to understand when to invite you to be on the program or include you on a panel. Because of this, what I really encourage you to do is find one area that reflects your passion or an area you enjoy a lot.
And when I reflect on the speakers that I really enjoy listening to, the ones that inspire me the most are those who are most excited about their topic, who love it, who make me want to love it. I start walking around thinking I might be motivated to work on something or explore something I didn't even care about when I walked in that room. So think about the things that really light your fire.
It may be thinking back to something from your residency that was your favorite or it may be a research methodology that you love. I can tell you for me at the start of my career, I focused on pediatric sleep apnea and medical student education and reflux and assessment tools. And well, you get the idea.
I was all over the place. You'd never know why to invite me to give a talk except maybe because I did a lot of, I don't know, one-off projects. But who knew what I cared about? And so luckily one of my mentors quickly told me stop doing a little bit of everything and really put my area of focus up front.
And in fact, to use one word or one phrase, everybody knew what that area of focus was. Now what's really interesting is I knew my area of focus. It just wasn't what you could see when you looked at my publications or my list of presentations.
And I can tell you as I coach people, I oftentimes look at their PubMed or their resume and try and get a feeling for what they're going to tell me is their area of expertise. And it's interesting how often it really doesn't match up. They may tell me that they want to be known for being all about microbiomes and the gut.
But when I look at their PubMed or their publications, I see that they're all over the place. Maybe there's some publications about microbiomes, but there's lots of other things too. What you really want is for them to be able to go to a source like PubMed and look you up and say, oh, this is the area of interest.
This is the area where I would want to have a conversation with me or give a talk. We want them to know you're the person to pick to give the next grand rounds or collaborate with to write the next big paper. But if somebody cannot look at your record or your PubMeds and figure out that this is who you are, it's really hard to be known for any area.
And it's even harder to build a national reputation so you can actually get promoted. Now, the other thing that's important to understand and consider is how to utilize existing local resources. This may be something as simple as institutional support or research funding or local grants that are very easily available.
Sometimes it's access to databases or patient groups. But one of the things that may be really interesting is what are the practice patterns that may support your area of interest.
So for me at my first job, I worked at Johns Hopkins, and at the time they would get a sleep study on every child undergoing adenotonsillectomy. Now, this was 20 years ago, but it really allowed me to look at all of these children and all of these studies without much of the selection bias that was a problem at many institutions. It was a huge windfall for me to have access to this, and it allowed me to think of a lot of research ideas that I may not have been able to investigate as clearly in other places.
Now, look at your own institution. What data is already being collected, or what are they willing to collect? Is there patient quality of life data that's routinely collected at an institutional level that you can connect with information about some other clinical outcome that you care about? Or are there other outcomes that are routinely collected by your EMR?
Now, the next big step is to think about setting clear research goals. What questions do you want to answer? What questions have you been thinking about? And what impact are you hoping to make on the field? For many of you, you may want a lab and the ability to answer fundamental basic science questions, or to get the bottom of a high-impact clinical question that will help many people change their practice, who have a large number of patients. At the start of my career, my goal was to have an impact on the field of pediatric sleep apnea and improve outcomes for these children.
And so what I started with was asking if we could collect outcomes for all the patients walking into clinic who had the complaint that I started thinking about comparison groups. I did short trials. Can I check everybody who's coming in for another complaint to use as a comparator? And with the support of people that I worked with, and quite honestly, a lot of pieces of paper, I started off that way and really just started measuring, started collecting.
So as my questions evolved and my patient population grew, I had the ability to answer and ask a lot of questions. Now, I also recommend that as you think of these clear research goals, you run them by others in your field. Run them by your peers, your senior mentors, but if you can, also run them by some of the senior thought leaders who you've already connected with or whom you respect and want to sit down with.
This may help you validate or improve your plans. But I also want to caution you, not everybody has to agree with your ideas. Sometimes the way to move the field forward is to think differently or to do things in such a way that nobody else has thought of.
So just because somebody says, that doesn't seem like the right way to go, doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. It's just good to know how people are thinking. It's really great to understand sort of the alternative perspective.
And sometimes, honestly, the reviewers of your next paper may be thinking as they see your novel ideas.
Now, in addition, when setting up your research plan, it's invaluable to create a personal mission statement for your research. This can help guide you and remind you about the goals of your mission.
It's sort of your why for research. Now, think about your broader aspirations and what impact you care about. What helps you stay aligned as you move forward and include them in this? Now, the next step is to actually develop the research plan.
This is the cornerstone of your academic career. So be sure to include an outline that has research objectives, that was objectives, methodology information, clear timelines, and what resources you need. Having this plan in mind can be really useful as you're talking to administration and really is great if you can put this all together before you get an academic job, so you can talk about what you need in order to be successful.
It's also really useful if you're changing jobs or thinking about new opportunities. Once you have this plan in place, go one step further and break it down into short and long-term tactics, so you can get a better idea of what you need now versus later, and you know how to measure your progress. Once you have these key steps in place, you can focus on a few other tips.
Number one is really to identify key mentors and collaborators. They may be an institution or maybe elsewhere, but these can be critical.
The second is to publish and present regularly. One of the ways you're quickly going to be known for what your area of interest is, is if people regularly see you on the program for a singular topic. It's important to keep track of these things, and so creating a schedule for manuscript submission and conference abstracts can keep you on track.
The third is to know the funding deadlines for key grants, local and national, and understand how to apply for them, so you can support your work.
The fourth is to learn, collaborate, and network at national meetings, and balance your clinical and research duties, so that you can come up with other ideas, find people to work with, and collaborate with data sets.
The fifth is the importance of building a strong academic network. Do this at the same time. This is the same people at your local, regional, and national meetings, but sometimes it's people outside your specialty. I found multidisciplinary work to be incredibly useful, and our differential knowledge of our respective literatures has also significantly helped me think outside my own box.
Now the sixth, if you have an interest, is to look at social media. This can be a great way to connect and maintain relationships or build relationships.
And the seventh is to remain adaptable, since you never know what sort of interesting opportunities will present themselves to you.
Thank you for listening. I hope you find these tips useful as you build your research career.
If you are interested in having someone take you through these steps, please keep your eyes open for the Academic Accelerator course we'll be launching this fall. It's not yet open, but it's designed to run you through a step-by-step plan to kick-start your career and put you on the path to quick promotion and success.
We'll be covering things like envisioning and building your ideal career, being known for your area of expertise, understanding finances, both at work and at home, building your national reputation, creating your research plan, and crafting a step-by-step roadmap to expedite your path to promotion.
If you're interested, please send me an email or DM me so we can talk more about whether this will fit with your goals. Registration details are coming soon.
If you like this podcast, please rate, review, and follow the Medical Mentor Coaching Podcast on your favorite app.
If you want to get in touch with me or share feedback or questions you're interested in hearing more about, please DM me at sishmancoach on Instagram, message me on LinkedIn, or email me at staceyishmancoach at gmail.com. That's S-T-A-C-E-Y-I-S-H-M-A-N-C-O-A-C-H at gmail.com. And please check out my website at medicalmentorcoaching.com. I look forward to talking to you next week.
