Infectious diseases fellowship

[no-see-um]

How doable is it for someone who goes into internal medicine to specialize in infectious diseases? Do you need a fellowship to do it? If so, how competitive is it? Thanks.

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[kinetic]

How doable is it for someone who goes into internal medicine to specialize in infectious diseases? Do you need a fellowship to do it? If so, how competitive is it? Thanks.

It's very doable. It's a subspecialty of IM, so you do need fellowship training. However, ID is not one of the competitive specialties of IM, so don't worry. Just make sure you really really want to do it beforehand. Get used to asking people what kind of pets they have in the house, where they have been for the past six months, and if they have ever been around bats or chickens. (And I'm not even joking, sadly enough.) In addition, ID is not just about diagnosing an infectious process. You may get a patient who has been treated by general internists for a while, put on multiple antibiotics regimens for varying periods of time, and is now in your care; be prepared to comb through the patient's chart(s) and find that information. Also, if you want to take care of HIV patients, that is evolving into a sub-subspecialty; that's pretty exhausting work, though. Bottom line: if you like talking about antibiotics and MICs all day long and exhaustive histories and physicals, ID may be the right place for you!

P.S. Your new avatar takes getting used to. I liked Towlie more than Timmy.

 

[Aucdoctobe]

How are the hours for infectious diseases?

How is the compensation for this specialty?

 

[no-see-um]

It's very doable. It's a subspecialty of IM, so you do need fellowship training. However, ID is not one of the competitive specialties of IM, so don't worry. Just make sure you really really want to do it beforehand. Get used to asking people what kind of pets they have in the house, where they have been for the past six months, and if they have ever been around bats or chickens. (And I'm not even joking, sadly enough.) In addition, ID is not just about diagnosing an infectious process. You may get a patient who has been treated by general internists for a while, put on multiple antibiotics regimens for varying periods of time, and is now in your care; be prepared to comb through the patient's chart(s) and find that information. Also, if you want to take care of HIV patients, that is evolving into a sub-subspecialty; that's pretty exhausting work, though. Bottom line: if you like talking about antibiotics and MICs all day long and exhaustive histories and physicals, ID may be the right place for you!

P.S. Your new avatar takes getting used to. I liked Towlie more than Timmy.

Thanks for the reply. I'm going meeting an ID doc at a party in a few days. I'm going to find out more. It sounds like some laborious stuff, but still interesting to me, nevertheless.

I'm contemplating whether I should go back to the towel in my avatar. But, then again, Timmy goes more with the theme of SDN.

P.S. Why don't you have an avatar?

 

[freetree]

in what settings do ID doctors usually work? is there a significant demand for them? if anyone could give me a description of what their general responsibilities are, that would be great..

 

[Fermata]

From what I've heard you need to be comfortable with HIV patients.

However, I've been told that you can tailor your practice to not include them.

Whatever that means.

 

[lf777]

Hi

In terms of lifestyle, it is very good. You can have very decent hours. You can also be a hospital consultant or opt to have an office practice only. Currently an ID fellowship is not competitive to get. In terms of compensation, pay is low relative to other IM subspecialties. The ID docs that I know are extremely knowledgeable about Medicine in general, and are very detail-oriented.

good luck
lf

 

[no-see-um]

We're still talking 6 figures, right? Would someone be able to pay off his loans?

 

[kinetic]

We're still talking 6 figures, right? Would someone be able to pay off his loans?

Why don't you just pimp? With that purple hat, you're halfway there.