Comment on Stress
someguy3@lemmy.world 2 weeks agoSo I’m curious. The way I see it, the actual practicing of medicine doesn’t advance the field itself. What advances it is research and development. Do the researchers actually go though med school or is that path more like biology PhD, chemistry PhD, etc?
NielsBohron@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There are medical researchers that have MD’s, but they are not practicing physicians (usually). There are MD/PhD programs that are aimed toward medical research fields (usually with the PhD being in biology or chemistry as you mentioned), and lots of biological and biomedical engineers working on certain medical fields as well (especially using stem cells and other chemical cues to regrow tissues). So yeah, biology- and physiology-adjacent sciences are where most of the actual advances are happening.
Actually practicing medicine is basically like being a mechanic that specializes in keeping one particularly poorly designed piece of equipment running.
someguy3@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
So was a wrong, most researchers go through MD/PhD programs? Like what percent of researchers go through medical school? 50/50?
NielsBohron@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I don’t know that you’re wrong, because those MD/PhD programs are exceptionally demanding (but are a good way to avoid med school debt for some). It’s more that even for pure MD’s, research is a very, very different career path than practicing physician. I think researchers still have to go through residency, but after that they’re mostly designing and arranging clinical trials, writing grants, interacting with related university departments, etc.
So, you know, research stuff rather than patient stuff.