regardless of whether you have completed a neurology, anesthesiology, or pm&r residency, is it necessary to be board certified in your respective specialty prior to applying/or being accepted into a pain management fellowship program?

if you already know that you want to practice pain managment 100% of the time after fellowship training, is it necessary to have to go through the (very expensive) board certification process in whatever residency you did before your pain managment fellowship?

Of course it isn't necessary before being accepted into a pain program. Board certification is not received until well after graduation from residency program because the oral boards are given many months later. But it is absolutely worth base residency certification. It is not difficult to achieve given the training. I am not certain, but I think it would be impossible to obtain certification for special qualifications in pain after fellowship unless one completed the base residency and board certification in that residency.

ABA Pain boards are not given until you are boarded in anesthesia first.

Yes. IF you do a ACGME-accredited residency then you need to be boarded in your "specialty of origin" first. Pain medicine is considered a sub-specialty sponsored by three boards (Anesthesia, PM&R, Neurology/Psychiatry). It would be like trying to be a cardiologist without being boarded in general internal medicine first.

thanks for the replies.

ABA Pain boards are not given until you are boarded in anesthesia first.

ABA-sponsord pain boards are able to be taken by bord certified PM&R, neurologists, and psychiatrists, as well as anesthesiologists under the auspices of their originating board

ABA Pain boards are not given until you are boarded in anesthesia first.
Actually, that not true. You can sit for your pain boards if you are in the certification process for your anesthesia boards. In other words, you can take the test. If however, you dont pass your orals you will not recieve your pain board scores.

Along the same lines.

Suppose you are a board cert. anesthesiologist. However, you've done a lot of pain procedures and you even go into practice with an anesthesiologists that's cert in both Anesthesiology and in Pain.

do you yourself have to get boarded in Pain in order to get the same reimbursement as a pain cert doc would have gotten for the same procedure.

Having said that, I realize that if you do pain procedures (and feel comfy doing them), etc w/o board cert you are essentially pushing the envelop, but can it be possible with the same compensation.

Thanks

There is a new ABMS subspecialty exam for certification in palliative care...apparently, pain specialists can get grandfathered in for the next few years.... the exam is being offered for the first time, this year. Once the grandfather period expires, one will have to do a fellowship (probably a fellowship that will be sponsored by IM programs)...the exam is co-sponsored by several specialty boards, including ABA, ABPMR...so, we all will have a rare opportunity to be triple boarded, perhaps more down the line:)

similarly, I have heard of a recent development in headache subspecialization; I don't think this is recognized by ABMS...but it is being co-sponsored by several headache societies...

does anyone know more about these developments?

Dr Shah, thanks for the update on this certification...I was completely unaware of its existence.

here is the link I found about the requirements:

http://www.abhpm.org//content.aspx?ref=13

ABMS Palliative Medicine certification will not take place until 2008. You can get certified by ABHPM (non-ABMS board) in 2006, but you would need to take a new exam in 2008 if you want to have the "ABMS certification".