Pediatric Fellowships: Post Your Reviews

Which are the best ones?

What makes for a good pedi fellowship?

What are your thoughts about the pedi match this year?

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I think the big division between programs is those that prepare you to do hearts without additional training and those that don't. Ask about their opportunities.
If you don't want to do hearts, then good programs probably have relatively few fellows per OR. Nobody has major craniofacial, neuro, neonates etc.in every room. If there are too many fellows per OR number, you are going to be doing lots of bread and butter cases.
Doing bread and butter Peds cases is fine, but you can probably do that already, so you might as well get a real job and get paid as an attending if you aren't doing fellow-level cases. Not every day obviously, but basic Peds should not fill your days.
If you want the best CV, then go to a program that shares its name with a top 20 undergrad school. If you want good training, go to a small program where you'll get all the good cases.

Posting this for a friend.

I can only comment on Hopkins since my pedi anes fellowship was folded into a PICU fellowship, so I didn't interview anywhere else.

Our pediatric anesthesia fellowship averages 4 fellows/year-- with the addition of 3-4 "combined fellows" who spread their pedi anesthesia time out over 3 years in order to complete a PICU fellowship at the same time. 80% of the time, as a fellow in this program you are assigned to and doing the hardest cases in the hospital-- sick PICU patients, cardiac, craniofacials, surgery on ECMO, massive spines, complex cranis, liver transplants, preemies, TEFs, complex caths, etc. Of course you need to get good at the bread and butter too so the other 20% is MRI, remote, extrophys, outpatient, etc. A great mix of cases in this program. Small enough that you get to do all the good cases. Big enough that there are tons of cases and a big name attached. In fact, lots of times we dont' have enough fellows to cover all the "fellow-level" cases, so the residents get a nice share of the good stuff. Surgeons know all the pedi anesthesia fellows by name, very collegial atmosphere, in my opinion, a great peds fellowship program. And a brand new children's hospital opening in a year to boot.

Happy to answer more questions regarding this program specifically.

Coastie said:

What are your thoughts about the pedi match this year?

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It requires you to attend far more interviews to increase your odds of matching.
Increased interview number leads to increased interview expenses.
Increased interview number leads to more wasted vacation days.
You get the uncertainty of a match day rather than the opportunity to continue interviewing if things don't work out at your first few interviews.
It probably makes you decide to do fellowship even earlier in your training than before (though this was kind of the trend already, now it is fixed at a too early time)
It shifts the balance of power in favor of programs over applicants which may lead to less favorable fellowship arrangements.
What's not to love?

GypsySongman said:

I think the big division between programs is those that prepare you to do hearts without additional training and those that don't. Ask about their opportunities.
If you don't want to do hearts, then good programs probably have relatively few fellows per OR. Nobody has major craniofacial, neuro, neonates etc.in every room. If there are too many fellows per OR number, you are going to be doing lots of bread and butter cases.
Doing bread and butter Peds cases is fine, but you can probably do that already, so you might as well get a real job and get paid as an attending if you aren't doing fellow-level cases. Not every day obviously, but basic Peds should not fill your days.
If you want the best CV, then go to a program that shares its name with a top 20 undergrad school. If you want good training, go to a small program where you'll get all the good cases.

Click to expand...

Some programs let you do 6 months of peds CV, some don't. If you are certain that you want to do peds hearts you might want to go to one of those places. We have far more pathology than fellows on any given day. I'm routinely doing complex, fellow level cases with residents or CRNAs. In fact, I don't think the fellows get enough bread and butter peds before they leave. I imagine that most of the peds programs will give you solid training. There are a handful of programs that are a bit better than the rest. They have a proven track record and an extensive national/global referral base for the extremely complex patients. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which ones they are. Make your decision based on the little details and you'll have a better experience. In house/home call, publication "requirement"/not, 6 months of CV vs 2-3, location location location, # calls/month, post call days off/not, PICU rotation details, etc.
Find the one that works best for you.
As for the match, personally I don't see how it benefits anyone. We have to interview more candidates, you have to apply to more places and travel there for interviews. Lose, lose. In the old system you could apply to 10 places, and if you got an offer at your first choice, you're done. You could cancel the other interviews, etc. If the program filled early with high quality applicants, great. It doesn't matter to me if we missed a "better" applicant that applied late, we still filled with high quality people. They would get in somewhere else. Now it's all changed, and not all the spots are open to the match, adding additional confusion.

Hmmm.... So what fellowships let you do 50/50 (or similar) pedi hearts AND adult hearts at the same time?

Can anyone comment about CHOP?

I am currently at a pedi fellowship where there are only two fellows. It is not a major heart center and we are a level II trauma center. It's March and I've already done almost 60 heart cases. I'm not sure what other programs are doing numbers wise. I would also state that just b/c you did an EXTRA 6-10 months of hearts, does not mean you are "ready" to do them. I know attendings who are years out who are still challenged by them.

I know some (most?) pedi fellowships are cut up into mini-blocks of rotations. At mine, we do everything all year long. It helps so I don't forget everything. It's also a disadvantage b/c it (might) takes longer to learn everything.

The ONLY thing we don't do here are transplants. I didn't want to do them anyways. Many of the complext heart cases are much easier than transplants anyways. The only transplant I wish I had is lung.

PM me if you want to know more.