ALTERNATIVES TO CLINICAL MEDICINE

People enter medicine for many reasons, and everyone has different goals and aspirations to achieve by being a physician Academia and medical research are two popular choices among others, but people with medical degrees can end up working in environments very different from the traditional physician’s workplace in a clinic. If you are becoming a physician in order to enter academic medicine and teach medicine, you may consider the combined MD/PhD programs. The length of the programs depends on the quality and intensity of your PhD research, but the programs usually require 7 years in total. Remember that medical school professors, just like the ones you encountered during your undergraduate years, are in a competitive field. They usually need a terminal degree in their field (a PhD) in addition to expertise in the application of their discipline, as well as good teaching skills.

Academic medicine provides doctors with a chance to practice medicine while pursuing their teaching career and research. However, people in academia earn significantly less than their clinician counterparts. Medical research often takes place in academia, with most teaching hospitals having strong research departments. If you truly wish to avoid clinical practice altogether, going into industry will provide a number of avenues for applying the skills you learned in medical school. The pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and other industries all have openings for people with medical degrees but may also require training from additional graduate studies. If pure research excites you, consider pursuing a graduate degree in a discipline more closely related to your area of interest. For example, a degree in Biopharmacology may serve you better than a medical degree if you want to be a research scientist in the pharmaceutical industry.