Research Guidance

Students at the Perelman School of Medicine have the privilege to work alongside some of the finest physicians and researchers in various fields. Penn Orthopaedics prides itself on the work that comes out of the department as well as out of the McKay Orthopaedic Research Laboratory. Working with these investigators is a great opportunity to not only learn but to contribute.

If you have questions on how to get involved with research in orthopedics, please reach out to the LLOS leadership who have experience navigating the research world at Penn. Additionally, for Penn students, you may access a list of Penn faculty with whom many of our students have conducted research on our student resources page under "Research Mentors". This is just a sampling of the faculty here at Penn and should not be viewed as an exhaustive list. You are always encouraged to explore the work done by the faculty at our institution.

If you want to be as proactive as possible, you can also take the steps listed below, though we generally suggest that you only do this after you have talked to the LLOS leadership or met with a potential faculty mentor. Both of these trainings will be ultimately required if you choose to do research in orthopedics at Penn.

  1. Complete CITI Training (Basic Biomedical Research). Save your CITI Training Certificate as "lastname_CITI_month_year.pdf" (i.e. smith_CITI_sep_2016). Instructions on How to Complete CITI Training.
  2. Complete the Penn Medicine HIPAA Training in Knowledgelink. Save your certificate as "lastname_HIPAA_month_year.pdf."
  3. Identify a Mentor. Explore the work done by the faculty in Penn Orthopaedics.
  4. When you identify a Mentor and a Specific Project, complete a registration for a Scholarly Pursuit by following the instructions available on the PSOM MD Program Scholarly Pursuit Web Page.
    1. For Clinical Research Projects ONLY, submit your CITI Training Certificate, your PSOM Training Certificate, and your PSOM Approved Arranged Activity Form via email to Dr. Annamarie Horan. Your identified mentor and Charita Brown must be copied on the email to Dr. Horan. Based on school policies, students may not work on any project that is not formally approved by PSOM. Students may also not work on multiple simultaneous projects or for multiple simultaneous mentors without the approval of PSOM.
    2. For McKay Laboratory Research Projects ONLY, work with your Mentor to ensure that the Arranged Activity Form is processed appropriately.

For those who are further along in the process and need help attaining Epic EMR accessplease follow these instructions.

One framework for tackling research early on as a Penn student is to complete the following steps:

  1. Identify a topic you’re interested and a faculty mentor
  2. Complete a non-systematic review for UPOJ (typically due March 1st of each calendar year)
  3. While conducting the review, find something interesting to you and a knowledge gap that you can answer with a simple study (survey, chart review, database mining, etc.)
  4. With your PI, submit this project for IRB approval and do the study with a goal of peer review publication and presentation at a national conference
  5. Fame and glory