The notice appeared on the department board at 8:47 AM on a Monday, pinned between a faded drug company advertisement and last month’s duty roster.
“Research Training Programme: Open to All Doctors and Dentists.”
Below it, in smaller print: “Conducted by Dr. Muhammad Yaqoob, Head of Research & Medical Writing, UPMED Hospitals, Lahore. No prior research experience required.”
Dr. Sumaira Talib noticed it first. She was early for her surgical round. She was an FCPS General Surgery trainee, PGR Year 2, the kind of doctor who reads journal articles during lunch breaks while her colleagues scroll through Instagram reels. She took a photo of the notice and sent it to the residents’ WhatsApp group with a single message: “I’m signing up. Who’s in?”
The responses were predictable.
“Research? Who has time for research?” typed Dr. Hassan Raza, doing residency in MS Orthopedics, who was always looking for the fastest way through any task. “Just tell me the format, sir, I’ll fill it in.”
Dr. Hammad Ali, the fresh PGR in General Surgery Year 1, replied with three fire emojis and “DONE! I’ve always wanted to publish a paper!” He didn’t yet know what a hypothesis was, but his enthusiasm was genuine.
Dr. Zunaira Malik, a quiet BDS graduate pursuing her MPhil in Oral Pathology, read every message but didn’t respond. She wanted to sign up. She was afraid someone would ask her a question she couldn’t answer.
And Dr. Junaid Rashid, Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine with fifteen years of clinical experience, and a reputation that preceded him in every ward, walked past the notice, stopped, read it, and shook his head.
“Research is for people who can’t do clinical work properly,” he muttered to no one in particular, loud enough for the nurses’ station to hear. “I have treated patients for 15 years without ever writing a research paper of my own. My patients are alive. That is my research.”
He didn’t know it then, but that sentence would haunt him exactly eleven days later, when his application for promotion to Associate Professor would be rejected. Not because he wasn’t a good doctor. Not because his clinical skills were lacking. But because the PMDC promotion requirements had changed, and fifteen years of saving lives, with only one publication to his name, was no longer enough.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Medical Careers in Pakistan
Here is what no one tells you in medical school: in Pakistan today, being a good doctor is necessary but not sufficient for career advancement.
The Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) has made research publications a formal requirement for academic promotion. Whether you are aiming for Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, or Full Professor, you need published papers in recognized journals. The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has its own classification system, W, X, and Y category journals, and the postgraduate institutes require a thesis, dissertation, or research project for degree completion. Since July 2025, CPSP also requires one published article based on your synopsis before you can sit the FCPS Part-II theory examination.
Let me share what I see every week at UPMED Hospitals. Brilliant clinicians, doctors who can diagnose a rare condition from a patient’s gait, who can perform surgeries that save lives daily, come to my office looking defeated. They want promotions they have earned through years of service. But their CVs have a glaring gap: zero publications.
“Sir, I never had time for research,” they say. Or: “No one taught us research in medical college.” Or the most heartbreaking: “I don’t even know where to begin.”
I understand. The Pakistani medical education system has historically treated research as an afterthought, a box to tick rather than a skill to develop. Most doctors graduate without ever independently designing a study, analyzing data, or writing a manuscript, apart from a single group project in community medicine completed with heavy guidance from faculty.
But the world has changed. And the rules have changed with it.
Why Research Matters More Than Ever
Let me be direct: the three reasons every Pakistani doctor, whether a house officer, PGR trainee, senior registrar, or associate professor, needs research skills.
First, career progression demands it. The PMDC requires publications for promotion at every academic level. Without research, your career hits a ceiling, and that ceiling is getting lower every year.
Second, evidence-based medicine requires it. We cannot rely solely on what our professors taught us years ago, because medical knowledge is growing fast. It was estimated to double every 50 years in 1950, and a widely quoted 2011 projection suggested it would double every 73 days by 2020 (1). That was a projection, not a measurement, but the message is clear: what you learn early in medical school can quickly become outdated. If you cannot read, evaluate, and apply research, you are practicing medicine with outdated tools. Your patients deserve better.
Third, Pakistan needs it. Our country is massively underrepresented in international medical literature. When global health policies are made, Pakistani data is often missing from the table. Our disease patterns, our population genetics, and our healthcare challenges remain understudied. Every Pakistani doctor who learns to conduct and publish research adds a brick to the foundation of our national healthcare evidence base.
Research Is a Learnable Skill
I say this to every batch of doctors who walk into my research training room, and I will say it to you now: Research is not rocket science; it is a skill, and skills can be taught.
You learned to take a history. You learned to examine a patient. You learned to interpret an ECG, read an X-ray, and perform a lumbar puncture. None of these came naturally. You learned them step by step, with guidance, practice, and patience.
Research is no different.
The problem is not that Pakistani doctors lack intelligence or motivation. The problem is that research methodology, when taught at all, is taught as a dry, theoretical subject disconnected from clinical reality. Nobody shows you how a clinical observation in your OPD can become a published paper. Nobody walks you through the journey from “I noticed something interesting” to “here is my published article in a PubMed-indexed journal.”
That is exactly what this series will do.
What You Will Learn in “The Research Clinic”
In this series, you are going to follow a group of doctors at UPMED Hospitals, Lahore, as they learn research from scratch. You will meet Sumaira, who struggles with statistics but never gives up. You will watch Hammad make every classic mistake in the book, so you don’t have to. You will see Dr. Junaid transform from a research skeptic into a published author. And you will learn alongside them.
This is not a textbook. This is a story, your story, told through characters who face the same challenges you face every day in Pakistani hospitals and clinics.
We will cover everything: choosing a research topic, writing a research proposal (synopsis), obtaining IRB approval, collecting data, analyzing it in SPSS and Excel, writing a manuscript, choosing the right journal, surviving peer review, and, finally, publishing.
If you follow this series to the end, you will have the knowledge and confidence to plan and conduct your own research and write it up for a journal. Publication itself often takes longer, because ethics approval, data collection and peer review all take time. Whether you are a fresh house officer or a professor with decades of experience, this series meets you where you are.
References:
- Densen P. Challenges and opportunities facing medical education. Trans Am Clin Climatol Assoc. 2011;122:48-58.