Providing Research Opportunities for Medical Students: Challenges and Opportunities

Research electives are very popular components within the undergraduate medical degree program at University College Cork, with all students required to complete an original translational or clinical research project in their final year. Barriers to the provision of undergraduate research opportunities include costs of laboratory-based and clinical projects, staffing resources, complex and lengthy research governance procedures, and increasing student numbers. In this article, we describe the undergraduate research program at our institution, and outline several initiatives designed to counteract the impact of these challenges.