The gap year for college students interested in medicine: Can they contribute to your mission?
- Resource Type
- Academic Journal
- Authors
- Fishman EK; The Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, 601 North Caroline Street, Baltimore, MD 21287.; Lugo-Fagundo E; The Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, 601 North Caroline Street, Baltimore, MD 21287.; Chu LC; The Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, 601 North Caroline Street, Baltimore, MD 21287.; Rizk RC; The Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, 601 North Caroline Street, Baltimore, MD 21287. Electronic address: rrizk1@jh.edu.
- Source
- Publisher: Mosby Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 7607123 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1535-6302 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 03630188 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Curr Probl Diagn Radiol Subsets: MEDLINE
- Subject
- Language
- English
Gap years taken between undergraduate completion and entrance into medical school have become increasingly popular. We examine the role of gap years among college graduates interested in medicine and how they might contribute to academic research productivity within clinical environments. Recently, academic faculty have struggled to balance increasing clinical responsibilities with their scholarly endeavors. Academic medical departments may have incentives to hire pre-medical students to help ease the research burden on faculty. Properly motivated pre-medical students may view research positions in academic medical departments as ideal opportunities to learn in areas that will broaden their scientific knowledge and help prepare them for medical school, while greatly enhancing their medical school applications through distinguishing themselves as co-authors published in medical journals. Our experience, with two co-authors working as research associates while preparing for their medical school applications and careers, suggests that pre-medical students can strengthen their medical school applications during their gap year(s) while proving instrumental in enhancing research output thus alleviating the workload of clinical faculty.
(Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.)