Preventive Medicine Residency/Profession

[wraggler]

Hi,

I'm starting this thread to find out about preventive medicine as a residency and as a career. (I know, only general residency questions but there isnt one for preventive). I've been researching about it A LOT online at sites like American College of Preventive Medicine (ACPM) and other sites of the sort. From what I've gathered, this field would be a large reason why I'd go into medicine but I still have my reservations. Could anyone with experience in this field whether in residency or a job give their honest to God truth on it? Thanks a bunch!!

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[Irongirl03]

I first found out about this specialty program when I was looking at the SDSU MPH program. SDSU & UCSD have a partnership for this residency. They might have more info, it's been a while since I looked at it.

 

[trixmd]

I'm not sure exactly what to answer, but I'll take a swing at it.. I'm a PGY 3 at UNC Chapel Hill.

Simply put, Preventive Medicine physicians take care of populations of people. We work in many settings including NGOs, public health departments, industry, academia, government agencies, and the military. Our jobs also span a wide spectrum from medical directors who do no clinical work, to those who wear 2 hats as clinicians and policy makers, to those who mostly do clinical work. In my program, we have an OBGYN who practiced for 10 years and then came to PM, a heme-onc fellow who is also doing her PM training, a family practitioner who just finished his FP residency and jumped straight into PM, a couple primary care guys who've been practicing for a while and then started training, and someone straight out of internship.

Preventive Medicine has 3 tracks - General Preventive Medicine, Occupational Medicine, and Aerospace Medicine. Each of these residencies can be completed in as little as three years (depends on the program, of course)- 1 year internship, the academic year in which the MPH is completed, and the practicum year of rotations. (I'll be working at state and federal agencies as well as the local public health department, and doing some research.)

I like it because the training and the career field is very flexible and allows me to to explore my different interests (Disaster Medicine, Injury Prevention, and Global Health - weird, I know..) It's not as lucrative as other medical subspecialties, but can very rewarding.

Here's a link to the Prev Med Interest Group - the website is a work in progress. http://www.amsa.org/preventive

Let me know if you have more questions.

Cheers -

Trix

 

[kimphilby]

Can I ask some further questions since it seems to be related, maybe Trixmd knows. Do MDs in preventive medicine do clinical practice? For example in academia are there MDs in preventive medicine who are clinical professors? Or do they (as it seems to me) end up doing epidemiology research in schools of public-health and end up not practicing ?

 

[trixmd]

Not all PM trained physicians in academia work in Epi departments. At UNC, there are MD MPHs in almost every SPH department except Envr (I think..) Not sure who trained where, however. As you alluded to, many of them are also clinical instructors over in the school of medicine (if they also have a clinical specialty).

As I recall most of the recent PM grads are doing some clinical work, as a lot of the HMOs and NGOs want Prev Med docs with a solid clinical background (ie 5 to 7 years of seeing patients after residency).

I'm in the military, so there is definitely some clinical work in my future (not more than 50% in a true PM job, but I'm just guessing) If I wasn't in the military, after graduation, I would go job hunting in the global health arena and then someday be a medical director for an NGO or aide organization.

Hope that helps.

Trix

 

[GoofyDoc]

How far in advance do you apply for the prev med residency? Is it the summer/fall preceeding the start date or is it 2 years before like with most fellowships?

 

[trixmd]

Depends on the program. As I recall, most programs wanted applications in the summer/fall time period.

 

[MintyKitty]

You may also want to consider the Preventative Medicine Residency Program at the University of Michigan. http://www.sph.umich.edu/practice/pmr.html.

There seems to be two tracks: epidemiology and health management/policy. We had two in my cohort of epid graduates: one was a long-time general physician and the other had years of clinical experience in the military. They both seemed to enjoy the program, particularly their experiences in rotations.

 

[NorthernDO]

I know its been awhile since anyone posted in here, but does anyone know how competitive these residency programs are for PM?