6 months vs fellowship?

you will find that the pedi fellowship will be more and more sought after - primarily from a medical-legal point of view.... sure you can do 6 months of pedi in CA-3 year (which on top of the required 4 months would be great) and get a job in a rural area...

A lot of anesthesiologists still do pedi with or without a fellowship. If you want to do a LOT of pedi and sick pedi, most major hospitals are heading toward requiring pedi fellowship training.

txdoc2b- to post a question and get 2 quick replies from tenesma and UTSW is why the internet rocks. they drop knowledge like Shumacher drops the hammer and Timothy Leary drops...

would you guys (or anyone else) care to comment on the same situation (ie, all 6 elective months in your CA-3 year in one field as a substitution for a fellowship year) for other specialties or focuses?

UTSW- I hear you when you say that any anesthesiologist can do most things without a fellowship. do you feel there are any fields where spending 6 CA-3 elective months would add a lot of value beyond typical board certification?

Tenesma-Could you elaborate on medico-legal aspects of having a fellowship when it comes time to defend yourself? my impression will be that almost all of your defense will be based on standard of care, how your actions were negligence or contributed to harms, etc

thanks!

I would say that from my job interviews, having six months of cardiac as a CA-3 has been a major boost to my resume. I am, however, also getting certified for transesophageal echocardiography and that is what has helped me even with those groups that don't do hearts (you can handle the sickest patients). Six months in the other specialties (pain, pedi) will probably not help you much as you will not likely be able to join an established pain practice without fellowship training and similarly, major pediatric centers are leaning toward hiring only fellowship trained pedi anesthesiologists. As an example, a non-fellowship trained anesthesiolgist at Children's Medical Center who had been there for 10+ years, was asked to leave unless he agreed to do a fellowship. He was forced to do the fellowship.

On the other hand, in private practice groups all over town, the guys will point out that they are more than willing to let the non-insured, super sick kids go to the major medical centers while they intercept the private pay/private insurance ENT, minor general cases at their surgicenters. Makes for an interesting situation.