Can you get a trauma surgery job without a surgical critical care fellowship?

[607955]

Can you get a trauma surgery job in a major city without a Surgical critical care fellowship? Don't you learn a good amount of trauma critical care in a 5 year residency?

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[ram006]

Our PD does trauma and didn't do a CC fellowship. I would imagine anything is technically possible. From a hospitals perspective though if you have two people that want the same job and one has additional training it would be hard not to give them the edge.

 

[SLUser11]

Can you get a trauma surgery job in a major city without a Surgical critical care fellowship? Don't you learn a good amount of trauma critical care in a 5 year residency?

A lot of general surgeons take trauma call without fellowship training.

 

[ram006]

A lot of general surgeons take trauma call without fellowship training.

Level 1? I've been wondering about this topic too.

 

[balaguru]

I currently do trauma/acute care surgery at level 2 and 3 hospitals and have no fellowship training. It all depends on how much critical care you want to do. When I was looking for jobs in this category, critical care was a big component of most practices out there so they usually required certification. The partners in my current practice for the most part have little love for critical care so if we anticipate a long icu stay we generally consult an intesivist; otherwise, we manage the patient on our own. I feel like residency prepared me adequately enough to take care of most icu patients. The few times I consulted an intesivist to help with a patient who wasn't responding to my maneuvers they rarely if ever added anything.

Unlike residency where the ICU was closed when an intesivist is on board we co-manage the patient and will write alot of the orders. The main thing they are helpful for is taking calls on a sick patient when we are in the OR. I imagine alot of trauma jobs with more critical care will rotate surgeons between trauma call and ICU call since it's really hard to manage sick ICU patients when you are also operating.

One of our busy level 2 hospitals is making the move to level 1. I don't think this will change much in terms of the load and variety of patients we see but it will change the flow of things since we will need to take on residents and do some sort of research.

 

[Alecroyer]

Many people take the trauma fellowship training and some may take time while some may not. It depends.

 

[thedrjojo]

The trauma /cc fellowship is only 1 year, so from a marketing and risk/reward standpoint is probably a great investment if that is the goal... The changing fellowship model to an acute care surgery fellowship and 2yrs might dampen that, but to enhance the next 30+ years of your practice, after 13 years of training, are you going to quibble and risk it over 1 year?

 

[Apprands31]

Anybody else hear about the president of ABS wanting every GS resident to take one year of fellowship before being allowed to practice ? So maybe an extra year of trauma may not be such a bad thing.

 

[Winged Scapula]

Anybody else hear about the president of ABS wanting every GS resident to take one year of fellowship before being allowed to practice ? So maybe an extra year of trauma may not be such a bad thing.

Are you talking about the Transition to Practice program? http://bulletin.facs.org/2013/09/ac...ents-additional-opportunities-to-hone-skills/

 

[surg]

For the OP, as others have said, many many hospitals require their general surgeons to take call that includes trauma. However, if you are looking for a dedicated trauma job, then you may want to consider the fellowship. This will give you options down the road. It is hard for me to imagine that long term there will be level 1 or 2 trauma centers that do not have fellowship trained chiefs of service, thus for your future mobility, having the fellowship makes it easier. Also, many centers are moving to a closed or semi-closed ICU, and thus the inability to be the certified intensivist for the the hospital, means they also need a CC certified person to back you up. That costs money to do something you can probably handle. This makes you less competitive compared to a fellowship trained trauma/cc person.

Overall, if you really want to go down the full time trauma path, strongly consider getting the certificate. If you mean being a general surgeon that covers trauma through the ED of your local private non level 1 trauma center while not wanting it to be the majority of your practice, you are probably ok skipping it.


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[Winged Scapula]

No - the Executive Director of the ABS gave a speech in which he said that he believes general surgery graduates are inadequately prepared to practice and that fellowships should be mandatory. He clarified that this is his personal opinion and not the viewpoint of the ABS, but it is nonetheless concerning.

http://www.amaliacochranmd.com/fixthefive/

Ah yes, I've been trying to click on the link to the article (I get Gen Surg News on-line) since Thursday and it doesn't seem to work; I'd like to think there's been some pushback because of that article but it appears that all their links are non-functional.