Research in fellowship

For fellows · Fellowship years

Almost every fellowship includes research time. What you do with it matters most if you want an academic job, but every fellow benefits from finishing at least one real project: it teaches you how evidence is made, and it shows employers you can see something through.

Pick a project that finishes

Match the project to your time. A retrospective study, a database analysis or a secondary analysis of a trial can finish in a year. A new prospective trial usually cannot.
Ask what the deliverable is. An abstract at ASCO or ASH, then a manuscript. Put the target meeting deadline on your calendar on day one (see the abstract calendar).
Know who does what. Who pulls the data, who does the statistics, who is senior author. Agree on authorship at the start.

If you want an academic career

Build a story. Two or three projects in the same disease or question say more than ten unrelated case reports.
Write a protocol. Writing even a small investigator-initiated trial with your mentor teaches you more about clinical research than anything else you will do in fellowship.
Apply for funding as a fellow. Fellow-level awards include the Conquer Cancer (ASCO) Young Investigator Award and the ASH Research Training Award for Fellows, and many programs have T32 training grant positions. Even an unfunded application is practice for the career development (K) awards you may write later.
Take the training. A course in biostatistics, trial design or a master's degree in clinical research during the research years pays off for the rest of your career.

If you are heading to community practice

You still want one finished project and a basic comfort with reading trials critically. Community oncologists enroll patients on trials too, and they are the ones who have to decide whether a new study should change what they do on Monday.