How to succeed in clinical research and scholarly activities?

1. You certainly need to have motivation and persistence despite challenges and failures. As you start working on your first paper, you will not know how to write, you will have difficulties completing your first paper, you will have difficulty finding a mentor who can help and frequently, your paper will not be accepted by journals in the beginning. You will have to be patient and persistent. Also, you should start your research career early in your medical school e.g. when you are in your first or second year of medical school. 

2. You should improve your skills. You can use Google and Youtube videos to learn how to write a paper. There are opportunities to participate in online training or workshop. National Health Research Council provides training too. You can perhaps request your medical college or a faculty member to teach. You can learn from instructions provided in a journal on how to write various sections. Reviewing published papers can help. If you develop your skills, other people including your mentors will have interest to work with you.

 
3. Ideally, you should find a mentor who will guide you. This is difficult because mentors are busy. Working with a skillful resident in Nepal or in US may be helpful.

4. Often the first thing to work on is a case report or an abstract for a meeting. Abstract is one-page summary of a case report or a research. Before you work on a case report, carefully search the literature to determine whether the case is rare and interesting. You could also help a resident or a faculty with data collection in their project.

5. Once you have learned how to write papers, it would help you to learn how to search literature in pubmed or elsewhere, and how to use reference management software such as endnote or others. These skills will make you more efficient. 

6. You could select a target journal by looking at their impact factor and quality of published papers. For your initial papers, you should not aim high and perhaps submit to a Nepali journal or new journals. An abstract of a good case report or a research study can be submitting to a meeting including a meeting in US such as local or national American College of Physician meeting.

 
7. You should look out for opportunities to write a paper. If your medical school sends you for a field research, you may be able to publish the field work in a Nepali journal. If you know of someone working on a paper, you should approach them and offer help once you have acquired skills. 

8. Collaborating with your peers can help publish more than one paper and maintain enthusiasm despite initial failures. 


9. Once you are skillful, you may be able to obtain grants from different organizations. 

Physicians who want to have successful career in US should really learn skills to write papers and conduct research. These skills improve with time and practice but self-motivation and persistence are key.