Yale’s New Triple R – Free? Expert Guide to Finding US Research w/ Saeed Soleymanjahi MD/MPH Part 2

Transcript

Speaker A: Welcome to the Rounds to Residency podcast, brought to you by Med Ed University. Gain residency insights and tips to prepare for your externships, research and professional development in healthcare. We interview preceptors and physician educators who will prepare you for your rotations and improve your clinical experience. Now here’s your host, Chase DeMarco.

Speaker B: So once you have your foot in the door, you can reach out to many different programs. They see that you’re dedicated, and I have heard that from other physicians and research. I get hundreds of emails a month and students wanting to apply for a research position, but they don’t really give any details of why they don’t express interest in just that specialty. And if you’re talking about certain specialties, maybe certain things in radiology or dermatology, they also don’t want to give you a research position unless you’re planning on going into that specialty because it’s so competitive, it’s so limited. Why take the spot, the limited spot from someone that actually plans on going into that specialty if you’re not planning on going into it? So I guess from where I’m standing, and I’ve listened to pretty much every online course and podcast about finding research from others out there, they’re all usually pretty general. What would be your steps? I know you said you reached out to some of the higher faculty, but in our conversations after said maybe that wasn’t the best option. You should reach out to others first and kind of go from there.

Speaker C: Yeah, definitely. I think two important consideration in reaching out is who to reach to and your message. So they both are very important to increase your chances of finding the people. And having said that, finding mentors is not a very systematic process. So it is kind of depending on a lot of logs. So you might reach out to the right person, but they might be on vacation or they might be on a busy schedule that they cannot respond or they don’t have any available position. So all of these matter and you just try to overcome all these things that are out of your control, as we discussed, really depending on your background, and you will kind of find it out from seeing your peers or friends, what kind of cv they had and what kind of mentor they found that will kind of give you a clue what would be the range of people you would try to reach out to. But as a rule of thumb, I think it’s better to start with people who have higher levels of power and physicians and then kind of move a little bit lower to more junior faculties. That was also my kind of strategy so you will reach out to chairs of departments, you will reach out to full professors, program directors, lab directors, and so on. And then what important is there are some concentration, like, you should not reach out to the same people at the same institute at the same time. That’s a red flag. So let’s say if you send emails to colleagues at the same institute, even if they were supposed to be interested in you seeing the same email, same person, that might be a red flag and they will reject you. So I had this database of emails that I was sending out categorized by institute. The time that I have sent the email, and I would usually wait for a while until I send the next email to another person from the same institute. So all of these are a little bit small considerations, but can really matter a lot. And usually I would wait at least three, four days before sending my second email. And after the second email, the chance of getting a response on the third email is really low. So unless that person is really forwarded to, you don’t spend a lot of time reaching out to the same person over and over. So second email at the most, third email and that stuff move on to the next person. So that’s kind of the timing and the person you should try to reach out. And definitely finding people who have done research at the same area, that you have your research cv build up, really increases your chance. Let’s say if you have somebody who has cited your paper in one of their papers, that’s a great subject to refer to in your communication. Because first of all, that means that you have a documented paper in that research field and that’s the same research field that your mentor has. So that’s overlapping because they have cited your paper and your paper was significant enough that they cited you. So just saying this, that our paper was cited in your paper, means all of these consideration that increases the chance of their reply to you or just basically mentioning the overlapping part of the research that you have done, that they have done, that really increases the chance that they will read your email completely and consider your request. So definitely avoid general emails without any individualization to different people. So that just waste of time and they will realize that you’re sending these people to 100 more people at the same time. So I’m sending this email to 100 more people at the same time and that won’t work. So you should really try to spend a little bit more time on individualizing your email to people. And also the lengths of the email is important. Usually it shouldn’t be more than let’s say two paragraphs and a few lines. Each of these paragraphs so should really spend time to summarizing your message as efficiently as possible. So when you’re opening your email, they are not facing this one long page of email that will say, okay, I’m not going to read this. So that’s very important. First, things that can decrease or increase your chance of getting attention. And if you have good letter of recommendation, definitely attach them to your email. As I say, a first email definitely have a good cv build up. That’s another topic that we can consider later. But building up a good concise and organized cv is also important to increase your chance. So touch your good cv, attach letter of recommendation, have a concise message in your email and be very specific to the person that you’re sending it to.

Speaker B: That’s something I hadn’t thought about. Is attaching a letter of recommendation or your cv. I haven’t heard that brought up by others that I’ve spoken to about this topic, but that’s probably really good. It gives credibility to who you are, your abilities. That would, in my opinion, increase chances. I’m kind of thinking also from a sense of emails I receive, if they’re really short in general, I’m going to ignore them. If they’re really long, I’m probably going to be too busy and not read them all. Especially for these higher up professionals that probably receive so much spam as it is, their BS detector is pretty strong, so they’re going to know if you’re serious. If you’re writing something really meaningful and personal to them, you basically are writing a personal statement to each one of these and customizing it to their position. And if you send too many emails, you’re just as likely to be marked as spam. And then I have a feeling and these spam detectors and emails change all the time. But if you get marked by spam from one position, there’s a good chance that all the other physicians in that institution, their filter might block you out from contacting them in the future too. So you want to be very careful with those things. So in that aspect, do you think it’s easier sometimes to reach out on social media or would that be a red flag as well?

Speaker C: That is tricky. And I have heard a lot of conflicting opinions on reaching out of social media. It really depends that person. Email is a very official way of communication. Nobody would be annoyed by receiving an email, but someone might be annoyed by receiving a direct message in their social media. So it is a hit or miss, if you know somebody and you like to connect with them, I would start with email first. Unless that person comes and comments on your post, they are reacting to your post in social media. And you say, okay, I think person is kind of a social media person, so they might be more open to social media communications. And yes, I have made communications and connection through social media, of course, but definitely it is not a pattern that everybody would like. So if you don’t know somebody, if you don’t know what kind of communication they would like, I would have to start with email. And yeah, I think important thing is that email or the first message you send them is the first insight they get from you. So even just screening your email and your request can really determine if they want to move on to opening your cv, if they want to spend more time thinking that if they have position for you or not, just based on that first screening. So we should be very careful, spend time on drafting a great message to increase our chances as much as possible because that’s our first encounter. And as always, let’s say if you’re dating somebody, you try your best at that first encounter. You don’t want to lose any chances because you never know there will be a second date, right? So that’s the same thing. You try to increase your chances as much as you can at that first encounter. So that that paves the way for that next loop.

Speaker B: It seems like people that are on social media a lot, it’s safer to potentially reach out to them because that’s something they’re comfortable with and they’re likely comfortable with receiving messages. This is hit or mid advice too, but especially those that are not on, that are not posting often, that maybe like something once in a while, but they don’t have a lot of posts themselves. You’re probably not going to want to reach out to those individuals on social media. So it does depend on the personality a lot. And with the emails, of course, you’re running the risk of being flagged as spam or they might not even see if it goes to the spam folder, the junk folder. But I feel like we need how to write an appropriate email course here. But do you think the headline should be something catchy or should it be professional? What would you put as a headline to an email?

Speaker C: I would try to be very kind of professional and not something that, again, if you use some catchy topics or headlines, that may be helpful for some audience but not for everybody. So again, I don’t want to lose my chances if somebody doesn’t like my catchy headline because I don’t know their character. I don’t know them yet. So let’s say if somebody is like, oh, this headline looks kind of off the line. So I just want to ignore that. I don’t want that happen because this is kind of a competition. That person is receiving emails from many more people. So you don’t want to lose your chances by things like that. And I don’t think considering a catchy headline really can increase your chances of definitely you should be clear with your message. You should say why you’re reaching out to them so that they don’t as why they are receiving this email, but adjusting it. It should be very kind of, I would say political in the right way.

Speaker B: So maybe something like attention doctor, et cetera, inquiry about and then cite maybe one of their journal article titles so they know it’s specifically them. They know it’s personal at that point.

Speaker C: Yeah, actually my email topics were just inquiry about a research position that was as general as this. And then in the email message I would specify one of their research article or one of their research project title that I have read in their website. So they see a specific information in the email text related to them and they realize, okay, this is a customized email to them and then that kind of keeps them inside the message and moves on. So I would try to customize the email message as much as possible rather than the topic or the title of the email. Fair.

Speaker B: And depending on what device they’re reading their email, if I’m reading on my phone, it’ll say the first two lines of the email. So sometimes you can use that to filter out your email. So you might want something very soon in the first sentence or two that is extremely personal to them that mentions their research article or something like that, they’re more likely to open it at that point. I don’t know if most researchers are opening emails on their phones or if they have outlook or. It really depends on what software they use, but that could potentially help.

Speaker C: No, that’s definitely a great point. I’m sure given the work life balance these days, opening email on a phone is a very common habit. So that’s very likely they will see your first email at their phone. And definitely you should consider trying to increase your chances given the fact that they will read your email on their phone. And that’s definitely good to start with some important messages at the beginning.

Speaker B: All right, well, I think we’ve covered just about everything. There’s only a few more topics that I’m still curious about. And I think to really make this entire concept whole, we should cover. And one of them is, where do you start? Where do you find these people? We have that once you find people, you want to keep them on a list. You want to make sure that you’re not sending too much to them or to the same department. So keeping a spreadsheet, an excel sheet for this is good. We’ve discussed what to write to them. We haven’t really discussed yet where to find them.

Speaker C: Yeah, definitely. That’s actually probably the first step and one of the most important steps.

Speaker B: Maybe you have to rewind this entire episode so they can listen to it.

Speaker C: I guess we should start recording from the beginning then.

Speaker B: No, we got to keep them listening.

Speaker C: To the whole episode.

Speaker B: That’s why we kept at the end, we thought of this ahead of time.

Speaker C: That’s your expertise.

Speaker B: That’s my excuse, yes.

Speaker C: Again, this is a dynamic process. It’s not like you do one step, you finish it, and you move forward. It’s like a cycle. You start, you move ahead, and then you figure out, okay, I have to change something. You go back and then you modify your first system and then move again. So it’s like kind of a feedback cycle and very dynamic. Where I can find those people are different ways. If you have papers that have been highly cited, you can look at the people who have cited your paper, and that could be a great resource for finding investigators who are interested in your research. And if you are lucky enough, they might be from institutes or research group that you are interested in. So there you go. You just reach out to those people, discuss their citation, your paper, and that’s a very highly successful publication. If that’s not the case, you can use a very generic and systematic way. You can start looking at the institutes that you like, the department that you think you will find your research mentor of interest. Depending on your research field of interest, let’s say if you’re interested in cardiology, you look at cardiology department and an institute, and then you look at their. Usually they have categorized based on research topics. So go to cardiology heart failure research group, say electrophysiology research group, say Mi research group. So then you go inside that and you see a bunch of investigators or faculties listed inside that group. So now you’re there and you look at their position and their rank. So that’s kind of how I thought that I strategized my approach and I started reaching out people who had a position or they had higher academic rank, like a full professor and then moved down. So that was kind of my order of sending emails to people. But first of all, I spotted the institute I was interested in and the field that I was interested in that filtered a lot of people out from that institute because let’s say I’m interested in GI. I’m not going to do research with a surgeon, which has nothing to do with GI, and they cannot help my career ahead that much. So it’s great you find the mentor at the same field. It’s not always the possibility if you don’t find them and also reach out to people who are not in that field, but indirectly can connect you to other ventures that might be more relevant, but it’s best to find them at your field first and then you reach out to them. So definitely, as we discuss, having a spreadsheet and database, very important, keeps you organized. See who you have spotted, you have the names, you have their email. When you first send email to them, you have the dates there, and then you can kind of strategize your next emails. Whom should you send the next email to so that it doesn’t overlap at the same institute and it’s not too soon or too late to send the second email to that same person. So I think having that data together is very important. The third source for finding people is our connections. If you are working with a research mentor somewhere, definitely they can introduce you to other potential research mentors. So my co residents, they graduated from a Boston program and their mentor at Boston program knew some mentor here, so they just introduced them and they just connected with them. So that’s also very important possibility. So you can reach out to your friends, your peers, people who have graduated from your medical school or your undergrad school. They have some ties between you and them, so they might be willing to share their experience and knowledge about people who could be potentially good fit for you to reach out as your potential research mentor. So I would definitely consider that as well in my explorer for the research.

Speaker B: You said if you don’t have any past research that’s been cited, if you don’t have a lot of these networks developed, then it seemed like another good idea that I believe you brought up in our past conversation was just go on PubMed, go on Google Scholar, go on whichever research database you have access to. Search for recent publications in the specialty that you’re looking at, and then start looking at some of the publishers of those researchers and see if maybe you can find their contact information. See if some of them might be willing to let you help out with their next or current project.

Speaker C: Absolutely. I mean, that’s definitely also a very sensitive approach. I wouldn’t say very specific, but very sensitive. So you would definitely find people who you will be potentially interested to work with them. But just the problem is their willingness to work with you might be a little bit less because this way of finding people is less specific than the other sources that we kind of discuss. But I know a lot of my friends without significant research background, without significant network who could find great mentors at great stqs, just as you said, just by trying to find those people, the names, their addresses, and reaching out to them with a good message and outlining their interest and their pathway convincing and they got the offer to join their research. Got it.

Speaker B: And maybe if you can find a connecting point, possibly if you’re on LinkedIn, for example, it’ll tell you who your connections are, but also if you went to the same school or if someone had a similar job in the past, and it can be a good icebreaker so you’re not just kind of cold calling, which, yeah, that’s a tricky one. That doesn’t work too well. Okay, so we have covered how to find people, how to find these research mentors, how to kind of organize, schedule, reach out to them. Obviously there are going to be some paid programs out there with varying quality free ones. It’s mostly going to be a lot of legwork. Before we get to the final surprise, let’s talk a little bit more about what exactly the Triple R program is now, what it plans on being and where students might be able to participate in the future.

Speaker C: Sure. So our program has different missions, has options for faculties, for residents, and definitely down the road, we are considering students as our target as well. The basic concept is to screen the faculties who are interested in collaboration. So that helps finding people one step, because if there’s faculty who is no way interested in having somebody in their research group, they’re not going to respond. We have already filtered them out because we know that they are not interested. So whoever we have in that database, they are filtered and they are interested in having some people in their project and they have an available project, live project going on with available position. So that is a great step of screening that triple R will make happen and increase the chance of connections. On the other hand, we are getting inquiries from students and that will help us categorize them based on their interest, based on their background, based on their level of career that they are at, and that also kind of makes more tailored or individualized connections between inquiries and the mentor. So you’re not sending appropriate inquiries to a mentor who may not be interested in collaboration. This is the key to optimize and increase the chance of successful collection because both the mentor and the student should be right, fit together. And when we don’t have structure, making this happen is a very haphazard process because it’s based off, you send emails and that’s subject to a lot of may or may not to happen.

Speaker B: You send 150 emails, right.

Speaker C: And I had almost papers by then, but I had to send so many emails to make something happen. But it’s like advanced search filter that we have in our search engines, in Google, in pubmed. You individualize your search filter your search, and that really increase the chance of getting what you want. So we have that filtering in our attending and mentor side. We have that filtering in our inquiry side from students or residents to categorize them and connect the right fit together. So I think that would be the key concept in triple R to increase the likelihood of successful connections and matches.

Speaker B: Perfect. I love that explanation and how easy it’s going to be to search and really categorize and yeah, optimize everything. So you have the students that are looking, you have the preceptors that are looking, or the physicians, the research mentors, and it gets rid of all of this nonsense that we currently have to deal with medical education. Definitely. And it seems like, okay, so triple R program right now is for Yale students only, and eventually the goal is to make it larger. No one knows exactly how long that’ll take at this point. So listeners might be wondering what they can do now. And I think you also joined find a rotation as a research mentor there. It sounds like the setup is very similar, where you can filter by different criteria, like research rotations, what specialty. So what kind of offerings do you currently have on your find a rotation listing?

Speaker C: Sure. So yes, definitely I will be listing available opportunities related to GI research projects that I know about or I have kind of involved. And definitely our audience who are interested in doing research in gastroenterology or hepatology more focused on cancer can definitely check my listing and definitely reach out to us to engage this kind of possibilities moving forward. Definitely we’ll be able to add more people to the wide rotation network as well, to list their research projects in different fields, in different departments. And I’m sure that will expand the opportunities for our audience to find projects that are aligned with their interests. And we’ll be able to kind of expedite the connection process. So I think I would consider them a parallel process with triple r because we have the feeding source in r, we have getting all this information across the system, and then we can kind of consider people who could be good candidates for find a rotation network and ask them to join this network, list their research projects, and that can help our audience to find their mentors. But eventually down the road, hopefully we will be able to open up Yale R to outside Yale community, to all states and outside United States. So that will be much more easier. Got it.

Speaker B: Well, this has been great. We have so many great steps for the students. We have all of these projects and ways that they can start today to potentially apply, gain some more information. And as these projects grow down the road and we provide more opportunities for students, it’s just going to be such a better system.

Speaker C: You go through a process, you feel this hardship, and then you say, let’s do something to help with that for the next generation because you get toast from people now. Your responsibility to help the next generation, I think I thought this would be one of the best ways I can help the next generation who are going through the same process.

Speaker B: Well, I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say thank you. Everyone really appreciates it. And finally taking the step that everyone’s been knowing. There’s a big gap, a big issue, but no one either knew how to or wanted to take the time to fix it. So we all definitely appreciate your hard work and everything that you offer. So besides your listing on finderotation.com, where else can the students potentially find more about you or reach out if they’d like to?

Speaker C: Sure. So I have a LinkedIn profile, I have Twitter, and I’m kind of a social media person, so they can reach out to me directly there. And of course, we can share our email at some point, and they can also reach out to my email directly and we can go from there.

Speaker B: Perfect. We will add all of those details in the show notes. Dr. Hussalman, Dr. Salmanjadi, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Speaker C: Of course. Well, thanks so much for having me, and I appreciate all the audience who listened to our podcast. I hope that will be helpful for them. And I’m sure we need to have follow up process to make all of this happen. Have a great day. Bye.