Regional fellowship interviews

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Anyone start the interview trail here on the west coast yet for regional fellowships? Thoughts? Particularly UCSD, UC Irvine, Virginia Mason, Stanford?

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Anyone start the interview trail here on the west coast yet for regional fellowships? Thoughts? Particularly UCSD, UC Irvine, Virginia Mason, Stanford?
You have to be some sort of a mutant to be even considering this fellowship
 
You have to be some sort of a mutant to be even considering this fellowship
Probably just a resident in a program with weak regional training. Smart people do extra training either in the field of their passion or to fill the gaps.

In my case, it was the former, btw. :D
 
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imo there's a lot of value to regional training, you can leaarn how to do blocks outside of the standard blocks, plus you learn a lot about u/s technology and extra stuff about local anesthetics too. I think it's good training for someone who wants to set up a block program, or teach residents, or do regional-related research.
 
You have to be some sort of a mutant to be even considering this fellowship

Is this fellowship worse than an OB fellowship?

Unfortunately, more training is the wave of the future. Hospitals and departments benefit from the cheap labor and administrators who don't know any better will start to require it. Do you really need a 12 month cardiac fellowship to learn TEE in order to do bread and butter hearts in the community?
 
Is this fellowship worse than an OB fellowship?

Unfortunately, more training is the wave of the future. Hospitals and departments benefit from the cheap labor and administrators who don't know any better will start to require it. Do you really need a 12 month cardiac fellowship to learn TEE in order to do bread and butter hearts in the community?
At least OB fellowship is ACGME accredited. I don't really see the need for either fellowship either. Any board certified anesthesiologist should be able to handle complex OB cases and OB emergency without any problen. Those cases depend more on institutional readiness than anything else. There is also not that many regional blocks to learn that takes a whole year of fellowship to do. Besides, most standard blocks are easy enough with ultrasound and quite effective.
 
Latest scuttle is that Regional Fellowships will also be accredited in the near future. UCI and a few other sites have been saying it may happen in the next couple of years.
 
again.. mutants are the only ones doing this fellowship
 
Anyone start the interview trail here on the west coast yet for regional fellowships? Thoughts? Particularly UCSD, UC Irvine, Virginia Mason, Stanford?

East coast resident here, and haven't heard anything from the west coast, but have had 2 interviews on the east coast, and 3 more lined up.
 
East coaster here as well

Interviewed at Cedar Sinai and USC so far. Have another on the scheduled on the East Coast. Haven't heard from UCSD yet. UCI said they were reviewing apps about 2 weeks ago.
 
Regional fellowships are touted as a way to do more blocks, but I know of programs that have fellows doing less blocks than the average resident at my program. Just food for thought.
 
Regional fellowships are touted as a way to do more blocks, but I know of programs that have fellows doing less blocks than the average resident at my program. Just food for thought.

It's only a matter of time until your program creates a regional fellowship then. I bet it's already in the works. It's just another way to get a year of cheap labor out of people.
 
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I am doing a regional fellowship while coming from a residency that is chalk full of blocks. Will graduate with somewhere between 300 to 400. That said, I am academically inclined (research, teaching, etc) and to pursue that a fellowship is necessary.

I don't know that I see the point in it if going into private practice, though. Just makes it look like you were not strong enough coming out of residency and thought you needed more experience. Though I do know some who would disagree.

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Regional fellowships are more of a political statement. I mean, the employer doesn't know how well your residency trained you in regional. Did you do upper and lower extremity blocks? Did you do some uncommon ones such as infrclavicular? Did you use ultrasound and also nerve stimulator technique? The fellowship is somewhat of a stamp of approval that attests that you dedicated a full year to blocks in a facility that has a fair amount of regional. In this way, it may help you get your foot through a overcrowded door. It also adds a feather to your hat when promotion time comes because you are considered fellowship trained, though not ACGME accredited.
 
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