Life as a tox fellow?

[DeadCactus]

What's life like during the two years as a toxicology fellow? I gather there's an extraordinary amount of reading. How are the clinical hours? Lots of call? Decent amount of time to moonlight and supplement your income?

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[Daiphon]

What's life like during the two years as a toxicology fellow? I gather there's an extraordinary amount of reading. How are the clinical hours? Lots of call? Decent amount of time to moonlight and supplement your income?

Yes, a lot of reading... d=). The other stuff is very program dependent. There is a push by the fellowships (and ACGME, I think) to limit clinical hours to 12 or less per week, but not everyone has gone there depending on how the fellowship is funded.

Me? Rounds 5 days/week, 2 ED shifts/week, 3-4 moonlights a month. 6 calls a month - junior level = primary call, senior level = attending call (with backup). I was also very efficient & effective with my "off" time, but projects & research often had to take priority.

Cheers!
-d

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[DeadCactus]

Thanks for the response! What is call like as a toxicology fellow? Did you have dedicated research months? Did you rotate through any non-tox services?

Sorry for all the questions. The websites for toxicology programs don't really seem to lay out the curriculum in the way residencies do.

 

[Daiphon]

Thanks for the response! What is call like as a toxicology fellow? Did you have dedicated research months? Did you rotate through any non-tox services?

Sorry for all the questions. The websites for toxicology programs don't really seem to lay out the curriculum in the way residencies do.

Call for us was as 1) physician backup to the PCC and 2) first call 24/7 for our sponsoring hospitals.

#1 could be hit or miss; we have *very* good SPIs answering the lines in Illinois, so we tended to get the very sick, the interesting, or the "this doc won't listen to me, maybe you can talk some sense into him" calls. Some days had 1-2 consults, others 15-20. All depends...

#2 much the same, but as there were days when we had residents carrying the pager, we decided that our main EDs should always get a fellow... we had 3 fellows my junior year, but expanded to 4 for my senior year... so very doable.

As for research, we could always get time off from the fellowship program's clinical duties... bench, data crunching, writing, whatever. Just had to clear it by our PD, which was never an issue. Getting out of ED time involved switches (no buy out by virtue of our funding).

Ours isn't set up to have "off service" rotations a priori; but, again, awesome PD who would cut us loose to rotate with any service we wanted, provided we could justify it. I hung out with the PharmDs for a month to get a better feel for their side of the equation.

If you're interested in tox, but don't have someone at your program, might I suggest ACMTs virtual mentor program - at www.acmt.net - to get plugged in...

Cheers!
-d

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