I’m an MD PhD student, so take my advice with a grain of salt, but I know several attendings at my program that got a PhD during residency. I think they were trained at Univ. Washington and at Pitt. Both said they were given 3 years to get a PhD. This is nice, because you won’t become the floundering grad student that gets lost in the lab for 6 years. At the same time, both also still had some clinical duties during the PhD years and thus they said it was an extremely hectic 3 years. They are attendings now, so I can’t vouch for the current PhD policies at Washington or Pitt. Overall, I get the impression that residents getting a PhD take on a very focused project with a definitive light at the end of the tunnel. In other words, they take on a project that shouldn’t take as long as a traditional thesis.
In terms of will it help, (again, just a student so read with caution), but I’ve noticed that the rotating students at my program who have strong research experience or expressed interest in research are the most noticed by the attendings. Departments always want to train academic surgeons, so stating an interest in getting a PhD would probably help, especially at more research oriented programs.
