How to Choose an MD/MS/DNB Thesis Topic: Feasibility Checklist

Choosing a thesis topic is the first real research decision of your MD, MS or DNB residency, and it is usually made in a hurry, within the first few months, before you know your department well. A topic that looks exciting on paper can stall a year later because there were not enough patients, the key investigation was too expensive, or the ethics committee asked for changes you could not make in time.

This guide gives you a practical feasibility checklist to test every idea before you commit to it: patient load, timeline, cost, your guide's interest, ethics committee hurdles, novelty and study design. Use it to shortlist two or three ideas and discuss them with your guide, instead of walking in with a single title you are already attached to.

1Why Feasibility Matters More Than a Clever Title

The thesis is a mandatory part of MD/MS training under the NMC Postgraduate Medical Education Regulations 2023, and DNB residents submit theirs through NBEMS. Your university or board sets the exact deadlines for synopsis approval and thesis submission. Within those deadlines, an ordinary question answered well is worth far more than an ambitious question left half-finished.

The problems that hold up a thesis are rarely about originality. They are practical: too few patients, follow-up that does not fit, tests nobody will pay for, or slow approvals. Most can be predicted at the topic stage.

2Patient Load: Will You Get Enough Cases?

Running short of patients is one of the commonest reasons a thesis falls behind. Before you settle on a topic, estimate how many eligible patients you will realistically see.

• Check the records, not your impression. Look at OPD and IPD registers, OT lists, labour room registers or the Medical Records Department for the last one or two years. Count patients who would actually meet your inclusion criteria, not everyone with the diagnosis.
• Apply your exclusions on paper. Comorbidities, prior treatment elsewhere, age limits and refusal of consent all shrink the pool. A condition that seems common in OPD can become rare once exclusions are applied.
• Remember you are sharing. Other residents in your batch, seniors finishing their theses and ongoing departmental trials may be recruiting from the same patients.
• Do a rough sample size calculation now. Use figures from a previous similar study before the title is fixed. Our guide to sample size calculation and the free sample size calculator let you do this in minutes.

A quick arithmetic check

Divide the required sample size by the number of months you have for recruitment. That gives your monthly target. Now check the registers: did that many eligible patients actually come in each month last year? If not, broaden the criteria sensibly, add a site with permission, or change the topic. Leave a margin for refusals and loss to follow-up.

3Fitting the Study into an 18–24 Month Timeline

In a three-year MD/MS programme, the time actually available for data collection is shorter than it looks. Topic selection, synopsis writing and approvals take time at the start; analysis, writing, corrections and binding take time at the end. Realistically, plan on something like 18–24 months between approval and submission, and less if approvals are delayed. Work backwards from your university's submission date.

Watch for these timeline traps:

• Follow-up length. If the outcome is measured at six months, the last patient must be recruited at least six months before data collection closes.
• Seasonal diseases. A topic on dengue, scrub typhus or another seasonal illness may give you only one or two seasons of recruitment.
• Dependence on other departments. Radiology slots, pathology reporting time or a single machine that may break down can all slow you.

4Cost of Investigations

Most thesis work in India is funded by the resident, the department or the hospital's routine services, so cost needs to be thought through before the synopsis is written.

• Is the test part of routine care? Investigations already done for clinical reasons (CBC, renal and liver function tests, HbA1c, chest X-ray, routine ultrasound) add little or no extra cost.
• Who pays for research-only tests? The IEC will usually ask this. Patients should not be charged for tests done only for your study. Ask whether the department or hospital can support them, or budget for them yourself.
• Is it available in-house? Sending samples outside adds cost, transport and storage problems.
• Kit-based assays. ELISA and similar kits come in fixed sizes and have expiry dates. Plan batch runs and storage conditions in advance.

Write a rough budget into your synopsis even if your university does not ask for one. Also check whether your institution has any intramural funding for postgraduate research.

5Your Guide's Interest and Department Strengths

A guide who genuinely cares about your topic reviews drafts faster and helps you get patients and equipment. A topic your guide merely tolerates tends to get stuck.

• Ask your guide what the department is already working on, and whether a topic can build on that work.
• Look at previous theses from your department in the library. Avoid repeating one exactly, but extending one (new outcome, different subgroup, longer follow-up) can be a strong choice.
• Avoid topics that need a skill or machine nobody in the department has, unless a co-guide from another department is formally involved as your university allows.

6Ethics Committee (IEC) Hurdles

Every thesis involving patients, their samples or their records needs Institutional Ethics Committee approval. The ICMR National Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical and Health Research Involving Human Participants (2017) are the main reference. Some features make a topic slower to approve:

• Vulnerable participants such as children, pregnant women, people with cognitive impairment or prisoners need additional safeguards and, for children, assent as well as parental consent.
• Interventions beyond standard care, new uses of drugs, or placebo when an effective treatment exists invite close scrutiny.
• Invasive research-only procedures, such as extra blood draws or biopsies not needed clinically, must be justified.
• Clinical trials generally need prospective registration with the Clinical Trials Registry – India (CTRI) before the first participant is enrolled, and journals following the ICMJE Recommendations expect this.
• Record-based studies may qualify for a waiver of consent, but they still need IEC approval and a plan for confidentiality.

Read our article on ethical standards in medical research for the principles the committee will look for.

7Novelty vs Replicating a Study in a New Population

A PG thesis does not need to be a world first. Its main purpose is to train you in research methods, and a well-designed replication is acceptable and useful.

Replicating a study in a new population is legitimate when you can explain why results might differ: Indian patients, a different region, age group, disease spectrum or level of care. Validating a clinical score, a biomarker cut-off or a questionnaire developed elsewhere in your own patients is a classic example. State the gap clearly in your Introduction.

8Choosing a Design That Fits the Question

The design follows the question, and the design in turn decides your sample size and statistics. Choose the simplest design that can genuinely answer your primary objective.

Once the design is fixed, turn the idea into a clear research question and objectives. Our guide on writing aims and objectives walks you through PICO, SMART objectives and hypotheses.

9Where to Find Good Topic Ideas

• Your wards and OPD. Notice practices that vary between units, questions seniors cannot answer with evidence, and problems patients keep coming back with.
• Guidelines and reviews. Recent guidelines and systematic reviews often list research gaps or say that local evidence is lacking.
• PubMed. Search your area for the last few years and see what has, and has not, been studied in Indian settings. Our guide on searching PubMed shows how to use MeSH terms and filters.
• Speciality topic lists. Lists such as our general medicine thesis topics help you see the range of feasible questions.
• Recent thesis titles. If you want a quick starting point, the PubMedico blog sidebar lets you download thesis titles for your speciality in Excel at ₹1 per title (the latest 100 for ₹100, or only the titles matching a keyword you search), drawn from the PubMed-based catalogue of our sister site medicalthesistopic.in. For a title you choose there, objectives (₹50) or a full thesis plan (₹500) can be bought separately on medicalthesistopic.in.

Whatever the source, an idea is only a starting point. Run every candidate through the checklist below before taking it to your guide.

10The Complete Feasibility Checklist

11Getting Help with Your Topic

A feasible topic makes every later step easier: the synopsis, the ethics application, data collection and the final chapters. If you would like help testing your shortlisted topics, estimating sample size or turning an idea into a protocol, the PubMedico team works with MD, MS and DNB residents on these steps. Message us on WhatsApp at +91 78787 33004.