Rheumatology

Dr.Cait said:

Hey all! I'm usually just hanging around the pre-allo forum, but I have a question for you guys here. I'm looking for more info on rheumatology. It is a specialty I am considering (yes, I know it is early to be considering speacialties). I am interested mostly because of my own personal history. I was diagnosed with JRA when I was 3 yrs. old, but I have been in remission for a while. Any infor would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Click to expand...

Hey,

Im a fourth year med student. In order to become a rheumatologist, you need to do three years of internal medicine training, followed by a two year fellowship (some places are 3 for more research time...getting a fellowship at this time is relatively non-competitive in rheum, but that can change). The conditions they treat include RA, Ankylosing spondylitis, Lupus, Psoriatic arthritis, and many others that you'll learn about in med school. They need to have a broad based knowledge in IM, since the diseases they treat have multisystem ramifications. They have broad knowledge in immunology and need to be excellent historians, and good with physical diagnosis. In terms of procedures, they generally don't perform too many, usually just some joint injections and the standard IM things (depending on how much "general med" they choose to practice). Income is somewhat better than that for general IM, but its not a very lucrative field like GI or cardiology, which has lots of procedures, and hence more income potential. Many rheum guys do alot of research and teaching. Anyway, good luck getting into and going through med school. You have a long path ahead of you, and im sure your plans will probably change as you go along.

Hope that was helpful =)

Rheumatologists can earn a lot of money because there are not many of them. And they do perform some procedures. Rheum isn't like endocrine in which they are only earning slighly above general internist salaries.

What makes rheum unpopular isn't lower pay but the nature of the work. It can be very depressing. You see less variety in rheum than you do in subspecilaties. You don't really heal your patients and thus they are chronic and miserable. I have a lot of respect for people who go into rheum because it is not easy form of medicine to practice.

Rheum was one of the consult services that I went through third year and I really enjoyed it. The staff all seemed very laid back, there was low patient volume and little call. One of the things that seems good about Rheum (at least in the academic setting) is that you can see fewer patients and really work them up well. It was a good change of pace from other services with 20-25 patients on the list.