Can neurologists complete multiple fellowships?

[Ctorch8]

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I was just wondering if it was odd or normal for neurologists to have completed more then 1 fellowship and does it open more doors for certain jobs? For example, if a neurologist completed a fellowship in EMG and another one in EEG's and was able to perform both these procedures? Are there certain fellowships at all that would work well together? Sorry if this is kind of a dumb question but I don't know much about this subject. Thanks for any answers!

 

[Hellothere111]

The short answer is it's fairly common. Some combinations I've seen:

1. EEG plus EMG
2. EEG plus sleep
3. EEG plus ICU
4. Stroke plus ICU
5. Stroke plus NIR
6. Movement plus Behavioral and/ or Sleep
7. Neuro oncology plus pain (hypothetically, a fair option)
8. Movement plus EMG

The reasons are usually the following:

1. Multiple procedures = more reimbursement = less clinic time.
2. A niche research interest, of course.


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[Thama]

In the case you mentioned, EMG + EEG, there's already a 1 year fellowship for that combination if you just want to be able to read those studies in a more general neurology setting. If you want to be a neuromuscle specialist or an epilepsy specialist and get into all the other stuff that comes with them (surgical planning and imaging, high dose immunotherapy, etc) then you'd need to do both fellowships but it's unlikely you'd take full advantage of both of them.

The combinations listed above are good ones that tend to work well from a billing/private practice perspective. From a research perspective other combinations include dementia + movement, either movement or dementia + neuroimaging, neuroimmunology (or neuromuscle at some institutions) plus dementia (to get into the nascent autoimmune encephalitis field), etc. Often research fellowships at a large institution can include multiple fields in an ad hoc fashion so you train with the people from other fields whose expertise you need.

 

[kchan99]

I've seen neuro-oncology/EEG and EMG/intraoperative monitoring. Usually the combinations involve one outpatient subspecialty with another outpatient one, or one inpatient subspecialty with another inpatient one.

 

[Spinothalamic]

Perhaps the most interesting combination I have seen is stroke/behavioral.

 

[daenschl]

One of my professors did fellowships in Neuromuscular and Infectious Neurology. This was after a residency in Internal Medicine and another residency in Neurology.
His practice now includes mainly infectious and vascular neurology (his resume is somewhat confusing but I don't think he did a vascular fellowship).