Should I feel compelled to do research?

Editor - As I enter my clinical years more and more doctors of all grades have told me of the importance of doing research. The importance to your career, that is. Registrars fight to do MDS in order to claim consultant posts. Senior house officers struggle to find time to get their names attached to a paper where they can and, whenever I discuss my BSC year, the talk is of how to get your project published during that time.

Of course, any advance can do nothing but benefit the scientific world in some way. however, it disturbs me that the motivation to write a paper now commonly comes from a desire to advance your career rather than from interest. A house officer tells me that research is now becoming more of a necessity, especially if you are to have a chance when applying for some of the more competitive jobs.

While I hope to find some field of science that interests me enough that I would want to research it further, I find it dispiriting that doctors are starting to feel compelled to do research. I came to medical school to learn how to be a good doctor, not to necessarily play a key role in scientific discovery and surely the ability of doctors to treat and care for their patients should be defined by their clinical skills not by the length of their curriculum vitae.

Kathleen Collier, third year medical student, Imperial College School of Medicine, London
Email: kathleen.collier@ic.ac.uk


studentBMJ 2001;09:217-260 July ISSN 0966-6494