PhD or MD after medicine..

Yes, yes, yes, and if you apply for and get funding then yes.

PhD or MD? lolz

I have BSc Psychology (2:1), MSc Psychology (Merit) and MSc Clinical Neuroscience (Pass), and was going to do a PhD in neuroscience, especially in neurodegenerative diseases or stroke, but the thing is that I want to be able to prescribe medications as well as going into research in clinical neurology. Is it crazy to want to do graduate entry medicine and then from there, go on to a PhD if I get funding? I know I have a LONG way to go but I am determined to dedicate my whole life to studying as I love studying and reading and expanding my neural network/circuits blah!!

People do both, both can be funded. A PhD/MD is fairly steadily becoming a prerequisite to progress in many specialities so you wouldn't be that unusual doing one if that is what worries you.

Ah, very good! what about you? If you don't mind me asking, what do you do? Are you a medical student?

Final year, all exams passed, job accepted, just waiting for August.

I hope to do a PhD all going well, but a suitable project to attract funding doesn't appear I'm not sure I'd self fund one (though many people do). An MD would be a simpler route to follow as it needs less supervision and tends to be a year shorter so could be easier to fund. Could even be obtained by portfolio...

Wow!! Congratulations on passing all your exams and accepting your job, so you're kinda chilling till August! Lucky you! I think you should treat yourself to a nice holiday abroad if you have the money haha....

Yes... I've applied to many PhD projects and studentships and they are so hard to get into and I can't afford to self fund myself as the PhD course is very expensive! I was going to go for an MD until I realised that it's for those who have an MBBS! I've been battling between PhD or MBBS for a long time, a lot of people tell me to just go for PhD but I think you learn a lot more by dealing with clinical situations and patients yourself through experiences and wanting to improve, e.g. you are bound to know in more details about the pathology, chemistry etc of a disease and then to apply to patients and if treatment you prescribed is not working, you tend to think more about it/more interested in it therefore coming up with a research idea. If you just do a PhD on it, you might not even have the depth of experience in the project itself as a person coming from an MBBS would? Does that make sense?

Well done for gettng unto the gem course x

Would a PhD project done by someone clinically trained differ from one done by someone not clinically trained? I'd reckon almost certainly. MD projects tend to be more clinically orientated though, so I suspect the difference is perhaps somewhat limited.

Yes, that's the main reason I want to do a GEM course, because I want to do a PhD project more clinically trained....is that a suitable reason for wanting to do medicine? Obviously I have many other reasons as well, I've always wanted to do medicine since high school and be able to treat people in a more disadvantaged areas such as Africa etc!

This is what I found: AAhhhh... that's again the reason for wanting to do medicine then PhD as I want to deal with 'real' medical problems...


MDs are consider by many to be the "real doctors" because they can help with real medical problems. That too is true. I certainly don't refer to myself as "Dr. Kelly" in any context other than academic ones because people might get the wrong idea that I could jump in and help in the event of a broken foot or migraine headache.
All that sounds pretty bad for the PhD. But here's the most essential difference between the two degrees: PhDs advance knowledge, whereas MDs merely apply existing knowledge. Unlike the MD who does not need to produce any original research, the person earning a PhD must produce original research and write it up in a thesis or dissertation. Then a committee of experts must deem that thesis as offering an acceptable advancement of knowledge before the PhD is conferred. It typically takes a couple of years longer to earn the PhD. Part of the reason it takes so long is that the person earning the PhD is being trained on how to think critically about existing knowledge, and it can take a while to find one's niche and fill a gap in the knowledge base. This means that if you yourself want to make important scientific discoveries and then tell the world about them, you will be much better prepared by getting a PhD than an MD. You also will be much better prepared to criticize studies you read about in virtually any field because you will be trained in critical thinking and writing. MDs typically aren't as qualified as PhDs to evaluate research studies and their significance.

If you are deciding which degree is right for you, ask yourself if you will be content with applying the knowledge you learn (MD) from other people, or if you would like to get in on the action of making the discoveries yourself (PhD). For instance, would you like to be one of the scientists who are figuring out how to reverse the aging process (PhD)? Would you like to see if giving aging mice a particular the enzyme (one that you discover) makes their hair shiny again and restores their fertility (PhD)? Or would you be content giving your future medical patients the proper dose of the medications that arise from this research and then seeing the signs of youth return in your patients (MD)? These are the kinds of questions that college students everywhere should be asking themselves, and yet I have never seen them do so.

This difference in training also means that if you want to know what the cutting-edge knowledge is in a given field, you have to ask a PhD in that field, not an MD. So for instance, let's say you or your mate is having trouble getting pregnant. If you just ask your local obstetrician or gynecologist what the cutting edge discoveries are regarding fertility, that MD is not likely to know. That MD can give you fertility treatments that he or she has learned about and tried with other patients.

The upshot of my message is this: We need both kinds of people, those who apply existing knowledge (such as the MD does in the medical field) and those who advance it (PhDs). But if you think a PhD is less qualified than an MD when it comes to having cutting-edge knowledge, you have that backwards.

This article is about US-style MDs, which are their primary medical qualification. In the UK, an MD is a research qualification; our medical degrees are MBBS or variations on that theme.

I know some universities offer an MD PhD track when you are doing your MBBS degree. That could be interesting? http://www.ucl.ac.uk/mbphd/

So u r saying that there's absolutely no difference between MD and a PhD? So what's the point of creating two different names, why can't just get rid of MD and get everyone to do PhD to get into research later on in career.

I may be able to shed some light here...I'm a scientist doing a PhD. In my group there are two medics, one doing a PhD and one doing an MD.

The person doing the MD is running a clinical trial for his degree which involves lots of people working under him and lots of patients across the UK. The person doing a PhD (and I) has to run all his own experiments and basically do all his work by himself. The scale of the project is hence much smaller. In his thesis he also has to very clearly define what he's done and possibly can't include any work not done by him personally.

Both degrees require you to make a novel contribution to knowledge which makes them similar in terms of academic rigour. Neither is more or less work than the other. The kind of work required is different. The MS requires more management and the PhD is more hands on. Both require the same amount of critical thinking, experimental design, analysis etc. In terms of writing up though the PhD word limit is 100,000 words and the MD word limit is 50,000 words for my uni (may differ between unis).

The MD pathway is only available to qualified medics whereas the PhD pathway is open to everyone. So I suppose the choice for a medic depends on what kind of research they'd like to do. The person doing the MD is now a consultant and will continue to be involved in our future clinical trials. The person doing the PhD works at our Prof's clinical at the hospital but spends most of his time here teaching and doing basic science research.