Balancing Clinical and Research Work
How does one balance between clinical and research work? This is an often-repeated question-probably because the answer is never clear. The fulcrum of the balance is not the same for everyone. Let us pause for a while and try to define certain things to bring clarity. What is clinical work? This is perhaps best defined as the time and effort involved in direct care of patients. Obviously, it also involves the time spent on organising the system that permits the above activity to take place smoothly. What constitutes research work? Technically research involves trying to find answers to the unknown or partially known. This should mean trying to understand the etiopathology of diseases which are poorly understood and finding new ways of managing them better. Broadly clinicians can be involved in clinical research, basic research or both. Clinical research can be prospective research such as observational studies, clinical trials, epidemiological studies etc but could also be retrospectiv
Dr. Lingam Gopal