Dear Folks,
Can somebody please explain the difference between Prelim. IM residency and transitional year? What are the advantages or disadvantages of each?thanx in advance.

Best,

A prelim medicine year is comprised solely of medicine ward rotations and medicine subspecialty rotations (cardiology, GI, ID, Pulmonary, etc.). If you were to continue into a full medicine residency, this year would fully count as your intern year and you would be able to progress to a PGY-2 year.

The best way to describe a transitional year is that it is like an MS 5 year. You rotate on some medicine rotations, some surgery rotations, pedi rotations, OB-GYN, etc. A smattering of everything. If you decide to pursue a medicine residency, it is likely that you would have to repeat a significant portion of your internship with the residency program, if not have to your internship all over again in medicine in its entirety.

For just my opinion, you will have a better training experience and more options if you do a prelim year in medicine. At the very least, you will get more in depth training with a dedicated year of medicine instead of a hodgepodge of superficial training with random months of surgery, medicine, OB, etc. with the transition year. Also, the prelim medicine year is more likely to count toward your final residency choice as a completed internship for fields like IM, Rads, Rad onc, Anesthesiology, etc. I have heard of some specialty residencies rejecting transition years as acceptable internships, although I am not sure if it was because they did not like the transitional year or did not like the transitional year program that the applicant was coming from.

what happens if u do a prelim year and realize that u want to do medicine after all, can that year count toward your medicine residency if u find a spot?

what happens if u do a prelim year and realize that u want to do medicine after all, can that year count toward your medicine residency if u find a spot?

Yes, that year would count towards medicine residency -- it's essentially the same as the categorical medicine intern year. The only main difference is that many programs don't make their prelims do continuity clinic. If you are at that kind of prelim program and decide to do categorical medicine, it will be up to your PD to decide whether you will need to do extra clinics to make up for a year of no continuity clinics. The solution might be as simple as doing one or two extra outpatient months at the expense of an elective (so it wouldn't even extend your total training time).