Create Professional-Quality Flowcharts with Gliffy

Create professional-quality flowcharts, diagrams, & technical drawings with Gliffy, the online diagram editor.  Terrific for poster presentations and manuscript figures.

Example:

Search the Medical Web – ScienceRoll

ScienceRoll Medical Search

Scienceroll Medical Search is a personalized medical metasearch engine.  The aim is to create a useful, editable metasearch engine for the entire medical community.

Forum Filter: IMG Taking a Research Year Before Residency

Derm83: I am an IMG applying to Radiology next year but I’d like to do 1-2 years or research so that I can be more competitive.

I’d like to start contacting programs for research but I’m wondering what things I should be looking at in a program:
1. A program that takes a substantial number of residents(eg 10)
2. A top tier program which might make more competitive for other programs VS a low tier program where I might have chance matching into.
3. A place where multiple adjacent programs exists (eg Texas Medical Center) so that I have more chances.
4. Research with the PD or chief.
5. IMG-friendly state vs geographically undesired state.

Do you believe 1-2 years of research will make me competitive enough to land a spot? (Non-US IMG, Step 1 99/230+, 2 months of USCE)

lapooh: I would say go for the most top-tier research gig that you can find. Research at big name academic place tends to make you attractive to the mid tier academic programs as well. How much research will help depends on much much you are able to get out in terms in publications from it. Research should definitely help for radiology, even AMGs going into Radiology tend to have atleast some research experience.You would also do well with stellar reccos from your mentors.
Other things being equal, it might be a good idea to go for a place that has multiple programs, like TMC, because you will be able to network with more people. That might help you get interviews at those places.

With added research, you should be competitive for radiology. But I am no expert myself, just know a lot of radiology-crazy people .

Research before residency [SDN]

PubMed for Mobile Devices

bookmark this slim PubMed interface on your mobile device for on-the-go literature searches.

Also available:

• PICO – Patient, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome search
• askMEDLINE – free-text, natural language search
• Disease Associations – Search case reports for disease associations

PubMed for Handhelds [National Library of Medicine]

Perform Statistical Calculations Online: StatPages.org

StatPages

The web pages listed here comprise a powerful, conveniently-accessible, multi-platform statistical software package. There are also links to online statistics books, tutorials, downloadable software, and related resources

Medical Podcasts

Here are the best medical podcasts of the web.  It’s safe to consider these low-yield resources during preclinical years.

New England Journal of Medicine
Audio Interviews podcast feed and “NEJM This Week” article summaries.

American College of Cardiology
Conversations with Experts

Johns Hopkins Medicine Podcasts
A weekly podcast looking at the top medical stories of the week

Annals of Internal Medicine
Audio Summary

Journal of American Medical
Audio Commentary

The Cochrane Collaboration
Audio summaries of selected reviews from The Cochrane Library

The Lancet
weekly and monthly podcasts for author interviews and expert discussions on clinical practice, evidence, and campaigns.

Finding Research Opportunities for Medical Students

Daniel Egan, MD

a published paper on your curriculum vitae when you are applying to residency will show motivation and academic success. However, an abstract presentation at a regional or national conference would also be impressive.

look for a mentor who can help you develop your own research project. More realistically, you may find a mentor who is already working on a project but who would welcome the help of a medical student.

investigate the department in which you are most interested in working. In many of the larger academic centers, each department has faculty members designated as the research directors. They would likely be the best individuals to approach first. They will be in tune with the current activities and opportunities in their department, and can link you with other faculty members. This is also an opportunity to meet a faculty member in your future specialty who can act as a mentor and guide as you go through the process of applying for residency.

How Can I Get Involved in Research? [Medscape]

Correlate: Advantages of Extracurricular Research

Advantages of Extracurricular Research

Since I have been working on my PhD,

• I have learnt how to plan an experiment, and finish it
• I know how to draft, write, and submit a scientific journal article
• I have had good quality research articles published, that add to scientific endeavour (Ever seen a dodgy registrar paper in a second-rate journal? Not for me.)
• I have had the opportunity and experience of presenting my work at national conferences.
• I have learnt how to do Medline and PubMed searches properly.

Better reasons to do medical research [Scalpel's Edge]

NIH “Open Access” Policy

National Institutes of Health has been encouraging researchers that produce publications through public funding to make those papers available through open access sites… Due to a Congressional mandate, the former “encouragement” became a binding policy this spring. That change has produced a variety of responses from the commercial publishers that will see their copyrighted works go open access.

Publications derived from publicly funded research could be restricted to subscribers for up to a year, after which point their authors were supposed to make a copy available to the wider public.

NIH “open access” policy causing publishing companies angst [Arstechnica]

How to Evaluate Academic Journals

Assessing a Journal’s reputation can be daunting, subjective work, especially for those new to a specialty. While nothing can take the place of experience, exposure, and familiarity with the research community, there are free tools at your disposal to compare academic journals.

The frequency with which articles are cited in other journals is considered a measure of a journal’s influence. Careful attention should be paid to the many conditions that can influence citation rates (language, journal history, format, publication schedule, and subject). These conditions are described in closer detail here.

Journal Citation Reports (ISI)
Shows the most frequently cited journals in a field, the highest impact journals in a field, and the largest journals in a field. JCR calculates 5 quantitative measures of impact (Total Cites, Impact Factor, Immediacy Index, Current Articles, & Cited Half-Life). Editorials, letters, news items, and meeting abstracts are excluded in article counts.

Eigenfactor
Claims to rank journals using an algorithm similar to Google’s. Eigenfactor uses the structure of the entire network (instead of purely local citation information) as well as periodical price information (via journalprices.com) to assess journal importance. Calculations are based on the citations received over a five year period.