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- Jan 16, 2012
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Hey there,
Apologies for the very long read, but I've unfortunately wrapped myself into a web of issues that has effectively paralyzed my path forward, and I could desperately use some outside insight from people with more experience than myself.
I'm a PGY-2 who semi-recently became interested in pursuing a CAP fellowship. I entered residency thinking "absolutely no way would I want to work with kids, they're awful!" but life is funny and I found that the stressors associated with working with children (total lack of insight, horrible parents, etc.) are drastically easier for me to tolerate than working with adults. I should also note that I am extremely interested in working entirely remotely from home, and I'm not sure how amenable working virtually is to working with children at least partially (I'm not opposed to a mix of patients). I am flexible to the type of practice within this though (inpatient/outpatient coverage or a mix).
My program is a community program in a semi-rural area that only recently opened its CAP fellowship within the last couple years. There are effectively no elective options available and no specialty clinics available either. While I love my department and the people, I additionally loathe the town that I'm in. The culture here is abysmal and backwards to the point where specifics would likely out myself, but I have a hard time imagining signing up for a bonus year here.
Now here's where I messed up even worse: I bought a house here. It wasn't a bad idea at the time - rates were incredible, my house is large and a massive quality of life upgrade, and my wife is happier for it too. However, I purchased it knowing that the likely breakpoint for at least coming out even would approximately be 4 years, and considering I wasn't going to do CAP, it seemed like a reasonable choice. My wife and I basically are only interested in programs close to where we ultimately want to end up, and that only leaves two big-name programs in that area. I could beg her to go elsewhere to expand my options, but frankly I don't feel that motivated to end up somewhere for 2 years just to move yet again to where these two programs are for my attending career.
So there's effectively 3 paths foward:
If you've read all of this, thank you so much for your time and I appreciate your input.
Apologies for the very long read, but I've unfortunately wrapped myself into a web of issues that has effectively paralyzed my path forward, and I could desperately use some outside insight from people with more experience than myself.
I'm a PGY-2 who semi-recently became interested in pursuing a CAP fellowship. I entered residency thinking "absolutely no way would I want to work with kids, they're awful!" but life is funny and I found that the stressors associated with working with children (total lack of insight, horrible parents, etc.) are drastically easier for me to tolerate than working with adults. I should also note that I am extremely interested in working entirely remotely from home, and I'm not sure how amenable working virtually is to working with children at least partially (I'm not opposed to a mix of patients). I am flexible to the type of practice within this though (inpatient/outpatient coverage or a mix).
My program is a community program in a semi-rural area that only recently opened its CAP fellowship within the last couple years. There are effectively no elective options available and no specialty clinics available either. While I love my department and the people, I additionally loathe the town that I'm in. The culture here is abysmal and backwards to the point where specifics would likely out myself, but I have a hard time imagining signing up for a bonus year here.
Now here's where I messed up even worse: I bought a house here. It wasn't a bad idea at the time - rates were incredible, my house is large and a massive quality of life upgrade, and my wife is happier for it too. However, I purchased it knowing that the likely breakpoint for at least coming out even would approximately be 4 years, and considering I wasn't going to do CAP, it seemed like a reasonable choice. My wife and I basically are only interested in programs close to where we ultimately want to end up, and that only leaves two big-name programs in that area. I could beg her to go elsewhere to expand my options, but frankly I don't feel that motivated to end up somewhere for 2 years just to move yet again to where these two programs are for my attending career.
So there's effectively 3 paths foward:
- I can stay at my home program, deal with the extra year of living here, and get my CAP training despite my worry about the quality of the training.
- I could apply to effectively the other 2 programs in our state that are probably drastically higher quality which I don't know if I can actually get into (neither of them outwardly appear DO-friendly), sell my house and deal with moving for the 6th time since my training started which my wife and I hate, and live in a tiny apartment compared to my house all for the prospect that maybe the training at these big names are worth the hassle?
- Say screw it, not do CAP, put in my time and just get it over with.
If you've read all of this, thank you so much for your time and I appreciate your input.