Transitional vs. Prelim for Rad Onc

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My mentor and other attendings strongly encourage doing a prelim medicine year at a university hospital (due to the acuity and exposure to more onc cases) and strongly advise against doing a transitional year. They feel like residents that have done a transitional year are below par in terms of patient management. On the other hand, residents have suggested I do a transitional year because the exposure to surgery, OB, etc that is helpful as a radiation oncologist. They also said they benefited from doing helpful electives. Furthermore, they feel like they got as much as they could out of doing 5-7 months on the floor, and that additional time would not have benefitted them. While a transitional year sounds alot kinder than a prelim med year at a university hospital, I do not want to compromise being as well trained of a radiation oncologist as I can be. Thoughts?
 
I had a similar dilemma when I was going through. Believe me when I say that the extra 2-4 months spent on inpatient wards during a prelim med year will NOT make you a substantially better radiation oncologist. I think that 5 to 7 months in a program which affords the intern an appropriate level of patient responsibility is plenty of time to hone your patient management skills. Now, I have heard rumors of some "ultra-cush" programs where interns are essentially treated as MS5's with very little responsibility, but I think most TYs will offer you good training, and the extra elective time can be used to gain a more discipline-specific experience.

That said, I opted for a prelim medicine year at my home institution. This allowed my wife to continue her job, and saved us an extra move. It was a benign year (night float system so I spent most nights in my own bed), and I had a good experience, but I don't think the extra wards time really helped me become a better rad onc resident.

Also, let me implore you (and all current applicants), DO NOT do a prelim med or surg year if you don't really like med or surg. If you are just "marking time" in these programs until you get to the good stuff, you will be MISERABLE come Dec. or Jan. I'm one of these weird guys who actually really likes internal med as well, so I had a pretty fun intern year, but you are definitely immersed in the discipline. If that's not you, do yourself a favor and go with the TY.

Speaking of TYs, it may not be well known among the applicants but the "prelim med" year at Carolinas Med Center is essentially a TY. Very nice hospital, very nice staff, 5 months of electives, Charlotte is a great town. I didn't go there, and have no vested interest in pimping it, I was just very impressed during my interview there. Y'all check it out!
 
do a prelim medicine year...you spent 4 years in med school to become a doctor, and you may as well learn how to treat general medical problems (mi's, diabetic complications, etc) because it will stick with you for the rest of your life. ty's are fine, but you kinda dabble in a lot of diff things, kinda like a 3rd year med student. they are def easier than medicine prelim years, but i couldnt do be a 'med student' again.
 
For those who would rather poke both their eyes out with a blunt object than do a year of medicine, I would offer some insight into the TY year. I am extremely fortunate to have the TY year obligately linked to the PGY-2 spot. There are only a few programs, ie MSKCC, Cleveland Clinic, and Beaumont. While you do feel like an MS-5 several times, as many of the specialities you rotate through have steep learning curves, their is some benefit in learning what individuals who you might work with in a multi-disciplinary setting do on their end of patient care. The added beneift in a program like mine is that you ineteract with the surgeons, oncologists, etc that you will be talking to on the phone about your pateints and you have already developed a repoire with them while rotating. For those unlinked programs, where you do have freedom in choicing your electives, there are wise and not so wise choices. Although you could go for the "easy" electives, it might serve you well to take some more demanding electives, IE gyn-onc or urology instead of say... endocrinology or Allergy.

All TY's are required to have 5-6 months of basic clinical skills which usually means 3 months medicine, 1 month ER, and 1 month Family, with something else like surgery (only one month at ours). I have seen so much chest pain and CHF in the month of medicine and ER to last me a lifetime (AMEN). One thing that I did not realize is that being in a TY program does have unique logistical challenges, in that you are often at smaller hospitals and end up as the only "rotator" in a speciality. This robs you of some of the social aspects of your intern year. You are neither here nor there. BUt it is only a year.

So I think that you don't feel like a "real doctor" without doing a prelim year in medicine, I could understand. But there are certainly reasons to consider a TY year with the increased expsosure to multiple medical fields.
 
well put.


Ursus Martimus said:
For those who would rather poke both their eyes out with a blunt object than do a year of medicine, I would offer some insight into the TY year. I am extremely fortunate to have the TY year obligately linked to the PGY-2 spot. There are only a few programs, ie MSKCC, Cleveland Clinic, and Beaumont. While you do feel like an MS-5 several times, as many of the specialities you rotate through have steep learning curves, their is some benefit in learning what individuals who you might work with in a multi-disciplinary setting do on their end of patient care. The added beneift in a program like mine is that you ineteract with the surgeons, oncologists, etc that you will be talking to on the phone about your pateints and you have already developed a repoire with them while rotating. For those unlinked programs, where you do have freedom in choicing your electives, there are wise and not so wise choices. Although you could go for the "easy" electives, it might serve you well to take some more demanding electives, IE gyn-onc or urology instead of say... endocrinology or Allergy.

All TY's are required to have 5-6 months of basic clinical skills which usually means 3 months medicine, 1 month ER, and 1 month Family, with something else like surgery (only one month at ours). I have seen so much chest pain and CHF in the month of medicine and ER to last me a lifetime (AMEN). One thing that I did not realize is that being in a TY program does have unique logistical challenges, in that you are often at smaller hospitals and end up as the only "rotator" in a speciality. This robs you of some of the social aspects of your intern year. You are neither here nor there. BUt it is only a year.

So I think that you don't feel like a "real doctor" without doing a prelim year in medicine, I could understand. But there are certainly reasons to consider a TY year with the increased expsosure to multiple medical fields.
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Do the prelim medicine year. I think the inpatient time is time well spent, particularly if you can do one or more months on a heme/onc inpatient service. Your future patients will be bouncing in and out of the hospital and it helps to know how to diagnose when they need to be admitted, how to do good work-ups, and what you can do in the outpatient setting to help prevent hospitalizations. You will be surprised by how much "medicine" you will do as a radiation oncologist. I also think prelim programs with a weekly continuity primary care clinic are beneficial. When your patients are "on treatment" you are their primary care doctor and they will have lots of primary care issues for you to deal with. Also, some radiation oncologists do significant amounts of the primary care of their follow-up patients and you can never really know what you will be like until you get there.
 
i actually did prelim med for the reasons outlined above. In retrospect I think doing transitional would have been just a well. So perhaps its a "grass is always greener" type of situation.
 
I think doing inpatient med is a good thing for general knowledge as a physician. However, my prelim med year had zero outpatient clinic duty. But looking retrospectively, I think finding a program with some reasonable amount of outpatient time is very valuable for a radiation oncologist, probably more so than for inpatient knowledge. Rad onc, for the most part, is an outpatient type of field and the medicine that you will be managing for your patients, are in fact, more outpatient-oriented....
 
I would just add that if you do decide to do a pelim year expect to work. You are a medicine doc that year and not just a prelim and will be expected to provide the same level of care as your co-interns. While you may have no interest in PTH and vit D levels, it wil be hard to ignore those sorts of things outright. This may be obvious to you but it is a lesson I need to be frequently reminded of.
 
I asked a RadOnc PD this question last week. His reponse was long, but ultimately boiled down to "it doesn't matter." He talked about the advantages he thought doing a prelim year afforded him and how one graduate actually did a surgery prelim 😱 .

But he also added plenty of residents do a transitional and he sees no problem with that.
 
COhiker said:
I would just add that if you do decide to do a pelim year expect to work. You are a medicine doc that year and not just a prelim and will be expected to provide the same level of care as your co-interns. While you may have no interest in PTH and vit D levels, it wil be hard to ignore those sorts of things outright. This may be obvious to you but it is a lesson I need to be frequently reminded of.[/QUOTE

Cohiker,
In retrospect, do you feel that a transitional year would have been better or do the overall perks of prelim med make up for occassionally having to confront issues related to things you don't care for like PTH? I am also curious how many other rad onc prelims are in your program and if they feel the same way.

It would be interesting to find out from people who are going through internships or have gone through them in the past how many would have chosen the other path (prelim med or transitional) in retrospect.
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As you can see, it seems like it doesn't really matter which you do for your Rad Onc career. It's a personal preference. Let me just tell you what sorts of things I considered before deciding which I prefer.

If you want an easy year that is not too painful and allows you to pursue other interests, I'd say TY is the way to go. And don't be ashamed of these reasons. Since ultimately it doesn't really matter, why the self-inflicted pain?

now I have two main reasons why I decide to do a prelim medicine year at a rigorous University hospital.

(1) The intern year is tough, and by going through it together, you form tight bonds with your colleagues and make some life-long friends. TY programs tend to be smaller, the non-TY interns tend to be not as strong, and the general morale is not very high. I wanted to spend the year with smart, motivated people in a program where there was a strong sense of camaraderie.

(2) 6 months after your internship, you'll forget all about the Ransons criteria for pancreatitis or the hypercoagulabilty work-up. BUT it is important to remember how to recognize a sick patient. and that, you will only learn by personally taking care of tons of sick patients.

Don't get me wrong, the internship is tough, and there were many nights when I wished I were in that cushy transitional program down the street. But I feel I made the right decision. it may not be for you, but I hope the reasons above help.
 
Either a Prelim or TY would be ok. The ideal situation would be to do a prelim or TY at the hospital which you will be doing your Radiation Oncology residency program so you can build the relationships with the Heme/Oncs, Gyn Oncs, Urologists, and Neurosurgeons you will be working with later. TY programs are generally not as strong academically as academic based Prelim programs (in terms of quality of fellow interns and residents unless you go to a large TY program where a large number of interns will be going into competitive specialties, i.e. Albert Einstein in Philly), but you have the potential to design your program to be far superior to a straight medicine program, i.e. taking electives in Heme/Onc, Urology, Pathology, Radiology, and Gyn Oncology, or even a refresher/preparatory Radiation Oncology month which IMHO would help more than additional medicine or ICU months.
 
ive known a couple to do surg prelim but mostly folsk interested in bracy as a career.
 
As I'm in the midst of the internship I have no perspective on whether it's worth it or not. I can say this much: it's amusing. I know that a significant percentage of the incoming folks in the program I matched into are doing prelim years. If nothing more, I'll have a stark contrast to the the rest of residency.

Surround yourself with smart people - presumably, you'll be glad you did.
 
all of these answers / posts are really well thought out. I have to say that I think a prelim year in medicine served me well, at least so that when a stressed out intern calls me with a half-bogus consult, I understand what they're going through. Also, it reminds me to get back to the team that consulted us as quickly as a I can and to leave a note in the chart and keep the house staff involved instead of going over their heads straight to the attending. Also, it helps remind me how sweet it is to be in radiation oncology compared to anything else.

But most importantly, I have to agree with whoever wrote that a medicine prelim intern year will help you differentiate between a sick patient and a patient you can send back home. There are still moments in the radonc clinic, for example a lung cancer patient who may be on the verge of obstructing a mainstem bronchus, or a head and neck patient who is so dehydrated they're orthostatic and tachycardic, where you have to recall your internal medicine training.... and send them to the ED 😛
 
I'm a third year medical student and going to be applying for Rad onc. I really liked surgery and am strongly considering doing a surgical intern year. Has anyone done this or know people who have, and what did they say about their choice?
 
Areion said:
I'm a third year medical student and going to be applying for Rad onc. I really liked surgery and am strongly considering doing a surgical intern year. Has anyone done this or know people who have, and what did they say about their choice?
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I'm curious about this too. I've heard (probably from folks on here) that RadOnc has a pretty "surgically-oriented" approach when it comes to their role in management (more procedural, anatomy/radiology being pretty key)... Is a surgical year as "good" as a medicine or transitional year when it comes to exposure to the kinds of skills you'll need as a radiation oncologist?

Thanks!

(sorry I have no info for you Areion; I'm in the same boat as you are... glad you brought this up, though)
 
I have a friend from MUSC/Emory who did a straight surgical year and swears by it re: anatomy. However, the residents who did surg PGY-1 years at our institution describe it as the 9th circle of hell, only with q4 call. The local folks reported minimal education, lots of scut, few opportunities for PGY1s in the OR, etc. So, as with any intern year, look carefully at the particulars of the programs themselves, rather than just transitional/prelim medicine/prelim surg.

As an aside, we've had 2 resident do Peds prelim years who rated it very highly...haven't seen much of this elsewhere.
 
rpkall said:
I'm curious about this too. I've heard (probably from folks on here) that RadOnc has a pretty "surgically-oriented" approach when it comes to their role in management (more procedural, anatomy/radiology being pretty key)... Is a surgical year as "good" as a medicine or transitional year when it comes to exposure to the kinds of skills you'll need as a radiation oncologist?

Thanks!

(sorry I have no info for you Areion; I'm in the same boat as you are... glad you brought this up, though)
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ive heard good things about surgical years too...unfortunately, its all about your personality and if you can handle a surgery year, then go for it. also, i am not sure how much OR time an intern gets...so be aware of this. as for 'regular' procedures, medicine interns get a fair amount of lines, etc (i did over 10 central lines, countless art lines, >5 thoracenteses, >5paracentesis, a few swans).
 
so now that almost 2 years have passed since the last discussion of TY vs Prelim med, I was wondering what many of you thought about your choice in retrospect. Specifically, I'm wondering if there are actually any people out there who did one and wished they did the other. I think we have enuf evidence to argue the value of each.

also, any advice on which would be better for a married person? It seems that a "cushier" TY would be the better way to spend the first year of marriage...

Oh, and as an aside: I could not imagine the advantage to doing a surgical year. At least in my experience with surgery (only 2 months), I never saw the intern step foot in the OR (except to hold the darn retractor when I had to leave for "lectures"). I cant see when or how the surgical intern becomes better aquainted with anatomy while pulling drains and changing dressings at 4:30 in the AM. It seems the intern does handle the "medicine" side of things on the floor, but of course without the guidance/teaching of a medicine team. Maybe its different elsewhere?
 
the only people i know who did this were people who transfered from surgery residency and someone who wanted to do brachy. Id say do it if you'd like. if you wouldnt, dont do it. i wouldnt worry about "anatomy" etc. and base a year in surgery on that. its not complex anatomy you know as a radonc doc. and its mostly imaging based anatomy you get into anyway that doesnt require a year in surgery to pick up.

And yes a well chosen transitional year will be much easier on someone's life. I did prelim medicine because I wanted to "learn" medicine. in hindsight i would have done transitional. you'd learn just as much (more?) and frankly a year of anything gives you some good reflexes and skills but not doing it daily you lose it over time.
 
Transitional Year by a mile...I'm doing a month of rad onc research during my transitional year. I also have rotations in derm(16 hrs a week), anasthesia (showing up optional), psychiatry and a couple of other chill outpatient electives where I can use some of my free time to start reading for rad onc residency. Pay your dues in medical school and match at a good TY--you won't regret it. 🙂
 
I totally agree with Reaganite on this one. I was also fortunate enough to match into a cush TY year and am LOVING it. There is no reason to punish yourself with a year of hell in a harsh prelim year if you can avoid it. During a TY year you get more elective time which you can use to prepare for radonc (by taking pathology, radiology, etc). If you think you want a lot of surgery during your intern year to "learn anatomy" 😉 then I'd STILL go for the cushiest TY program out there you can find, then use some of your elective time in surgery months (while your cohorts are at the beach or chilling at home playing croquet in the backyard). It's true that by doing a prelim medicine year you'd feel more confident on the wards than a TY at the end of your year..but who cares? You're not going to be working on the wards the rest of your life and you'll lose those skills you acquired by the end of your radonc residency for sure. I see intern year as another hoop to jump through before landing your dream job..so no reason to make it harder than necessary
 
my 2 cents on this topic, which i have prev posted several times.

if you match into radonc, it is a matter of personal preference which intern year to choose. however, if you do not match into radonc, then it is my opinion that one should do an prelim medicine year at a univ hospital , rather than a transitional year.

why? if you do an prelim medicine year at an academic center, you have the opportunity to meet and get to know the radonc dept (it takes initiative, but its possible...i did so). most transitional years (compared to prelim med years) are at community hospitals or hospitals w/o a radonc residency program.

also, if you do not match, you have the opportunity to transition directly into a medicine program, as opposed to starting intern year over again if you do not choose to go into medicine. a prelim med year at a strong program also looks good on your cv.

someone also mentioned the 'social' aspect of intern year...prelim med programs are generally much larger (30-40interns) vs transitional programs (4-8 interns). thus, you have a larger group of people to possibly be friends with.

if location is important to you, there are more prelim programs in desirable locations than transitional programs.

lastly, getting into a transitional year is NOT easy. you are competing against people in derm, optho, rads, & radonc...traditionally the most competitive non-surgical fields. apply all over...dont limit yourself.
 
yyou fail to match in radonc but do a prelim year, you can also do some networking in radonc (if there is a program there as radonc says) - and maybe even a rotation in it if you do transitional too.
 
Well is there anyway to set up your rank list so that if you do not match into a rad onc position then your default prelim year is an internal med year and not transitional?
 
there are 10 transitional programs at hospitals with radonc residencies (out of 80).
http://www.ama-assn.org/vapp/freida/pgmrslt/1,1239,,00.html
there area few more if you include the hospitals that have transitional programs at associated community hospitals.

> 90% radonc residency program has an interna med prelim program associated with it.
 
chuwoods said:
Well is there anyway to set up your rank list so that if you do not match into a rad onc position then your default prelim year is an internal med year and not transitional?
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yes. you can arrange it so if you dont match in pgy2 you can do prelim in a different place you would have otherwise. or indeed diff't places for pgy1 for each pgy2 if you wished.
 
chuwoods said:
Well is there anyway to set up your rank list so that if you do not match into a rad onc position then your default prelim year is an internal med year and not transitional?
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the rank list works like an IF, THEN clause...

IF you match at MDACC, THEN you would like to match at Baylor med, etc
IF you match at UCSF, THEN you would like to match at stanford med, ucsf med, etc

IF you do not match, THEN you would like to match at___________.
 
Where are the internal med prelim years that have 3+ blocks of electives? I think this is important since we will see quite a bit of GYN as rad oncs and some Peds as well.

thanks
 
I did mine in OB-Gyn and picked a program that a.) had a strong gyn-onc presence, b.) did not have a gyn-onc fellowship, and c.) scheduled PGY1s in of gyn-onc.

The OB stuff gives you a lot of experience with o/p medicine. Benign gyn and annuals turn up a lot of stuff that should be of interest to an oncologist. And gyn is a very procedural specialty. My program had us do a month in the surg and med icu's and had a full fledged ultrasound month (both OB and Gyn). Being qualified in sonography was very helpful when I did my first prostate volume study.

I also liked the year because we did get to do a substantial amount of surgery at my program. One case: A prolapsed fibroid which should have been a piece of cake to remove. But when I grasped the thing with the tenaculum, it shredded and bled. I stopped right there and told the attending I wanted a frozen on it before we did anything more. Probably a bit presumptuous for a newly minted intern, but she took a second look and after realizing this wasn't your everyday prolapsed fibroid agreed. I scrubbed out went to path and looked at the PD CA. We closed up shop and I later assisted on the hyst. Then followed the patient to chemo/rads.

I plan on specializing as much as possible in gyn rad onc, and have a strong interest in brachy, so this was a very good experience for me. Even delivering babies, although at the time it seemed a bit of a pain some nights on L&D call. All told, I wouldn't change a thing.

Also, outside of your department, at tumor conferences, you get a lot more respect from the surgeons once they find out you can tie a knot, and know how to put in your own stents.

....and medicine was like watching yourself become fossilized in the Tar Pits of La Brea.
 
i honestly dont care if the surgeons think poorly of me for not being a good surgeon (ie can't tie surgical knots, put in stents, and if there is a vessel, i will hit it) but I do want good docs to respect me as a good doc.
 
True, you will learn more about medicine during a prelim year than you would in a transitional. Your goal, on the other hand, is to prepare yourself to become a radiation oncologist. Once your intern year is over -- prelim or transitional -- you can basically throw what you learned out the window, because you'll feel like you're having to start all over again. Rad onc is a different world, and unless you had an exceptional path to your training, nothing you did during medical school or internship is likely to have any real bearing on what you learn during your four years of residency.

Many, including myself, have believed that it's better to be a well-rounded M.D., knowing as much general medicine as you can, because ultimately it will help the patient, right? But shy of doing a full internal medicine residency, you're not going to accomplish that, and you'll only be fooling yourself if you think that one year of internship will equip you with mad diagnostic/management skills. If, as a rad onc, you try to take on an internist's role without the proper training of an internist, you're going to make some mistakes -- barking up the wrong tree in trying to work up a problem, ordering too many or too few tests, overreacting, etc. -- and at worst you may do harm to the patient.

So it's best not to pretend to be a generalist. Leave that to the guys who actually have to take call in the hospital, while you concentrate on knowing oncology and knowing radiation oncology.

So, your choice of transitional versus preliminary medicine really has no bearing on how you're going to manage your patients. It comes down to a personal choice. Would you rather spend a year as a mini-internist, taking call q4 for 11 months out of the year, wasting your life away on wards and useless medicine subspecialties and having essentially no electives? Or would you rather have a few general med months here, a few surgical months there, and spend the rest doing some cool electives?

I chose the former. I wish I had done the latter. I spent a lot more time learning medicine, but am I a better doctor because of it? No way. I learned to work up a lot of endocarditises, rule out MIs, and did a ton of admissions, but I never care to do any of that again.

A lot of your own experiences will depend on the actual program. Some transitional programs can be really crappy experiences, and some preliminary programs can be really cush.

Probably the only thing you can really glean from your internship year is how to work within a hospital system. With that being said, probably the best advice I could give you is try to do your internship at the same hospital you'll be doing your residency, so at least you'll be familiar with the peculiarities of that institution's system.

Rad onc is great. It's better to just forget about the 365 days that precede it and realize that they're unimportant.
:luck:
 
Brim said:
Would you rather spend a year as a mini-internist, taking call q4 for 11 months out of the year, wasting your life away on wards and useless medicine subspecialties and having essentially no electives? Or would you rather have a few general med months here, a few surgical months there, and spend the rest doing some cool electives?

I chose the former. I wish I had done the latter. I spent a lot more time learning medicine, but am I a better doctor because of it? No way.
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Excellent post, I agree wholeheartedly. One caveat to throw in is location. Doing a prelim year in the same institution as your med school can make your life easier plus you will have a built in social network. Also, as another poster pointed out ther seems to be more camraderie among interns in larger medical centers than in small transitional programs.

I too did prelim medicine in a large academic med center with 8 months of q4 and only one elective month. I actually enjoyed it but I would never fault someone for doing a transitional for the reasons illustrated above.

Overall I think it makes very little difference to your future (as Brim eloquently stated) what you do your first year. Just think of it as a stepping stone to your future.
 
Just had to throw my two cents in...Yes, I did a prelim year. But that was because of geographical restrictions. I did not want to move twice. True, I learned a lot about inpatient medicine last year. How much will this help me in rad onc residency? Little to none. If you can, do a transitional. You will then start residency significantly less exhausted than your prelim counterparts. I need a vacation much sooner than later.

Today was my first day of on treatment clinic at the VA. I actually started to change a guy's insulin regimen because his sugars were through the roof and no one had seemed to notice. I then caught myself and realized that is no longer my job. It was a bit surreal.
 
This may be a stupid question but how do you pull off matching at the same institution for both rad onc and intern year?
How many rad onc programs did you apply to and how many intern year prog did you apply to?
If you applied to about 50 rad onc programs and many of them have 1-2 spots/yr what are the odds that you will know where you will actually match. Can you just ask to interview at the TY or internal med prelim while you are there?

thanks
 
Areion said:
I'm a third year medical student and going to be applying for Rad onc. I really liked surgery and am strongly considering doing a surgical intern year. Has anyone done this or know people who have, and what did they say about their choice?
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A resident in my program had done a surgery year. Albeit, it was at a relatively cush private hospital program, but a surgery internship is still a surgery internship. He liked it and was fond of the experience there.

If you dig surgery, then by all means, go for it.

I wonder if it's possible to do the intern year in something like PM&R or NucMed or even Ob-Gyn (if you're insane)?
 
chuwoods said:
This may be a stupid question but how do you pull off matching at the same institution for both rad onc and intern year?
How many rad onc programs did you apply to and how many intern year prog did you apply to?
If you applied to about 50 rad onc programs and many of them have 1-2 spots/yr what are the odds that you will know where you will actually match. Can you just ask to interview at the TY or internal med prelim while you are there?
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That's a great question.

It's very difficult (and expensive) to apply for and interview at as many transitional programs as you do for rad onc spots. If your goal is to interview at 10-20 rad onc spots, then adding just 5 transitional interviews on top of that would really stretch your already limited time. It's not practical to interview at more than a few TP programs. You should limit yourself to 3, maybe 4.

Obviously you don't know where you're going to match, so you have to pick which 3 programs you're most likely to match at, such as ones where you've done away rotations you like or your home program.

I admit, it's easier said than done, but it's good to do if you can pull it off.

As for asking for combined interviews (i.e. interviewing for transitional year while you're there for your rad onc interview), it can be done. However, you'll still need to apply to these programs upfront with ERAS.
 
Interesting.

So when you do apply for rad onc do you guys apply to several prelim places as well? Or is prelim something you do when you scramble?
 
Pewl said:
Interesting.

So when you do apply for rad onc do you guys apply to several prelim places as well? Or is prelim something you do when you scramble?
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Your intern year should be done through the match process. Scrambling is the process you have to go through if you don't land a residency through the match. You don't want to have to scramble. Many prelim/TY programs are small and fill up in the match, so if you match in rad onc but don't match for a prelim and have to scramble for a spot, you could end up in god-knows-where.
 
i agree with brim. i thought id "learn more medicine" in prelim. Nope. In fact I might have learned more even in transitional. its hard to imagine but you will lose much of what you dont use.
 
stephew said:
i agree with brim. i thought id "learn more medicine" in prelim. Nope. In fact I might have learned more even in transitional. its hard to imagine but you will lose much of what you dont use.
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is this a case of the grass being greener on the other side? i think possibly so...
 
radonc said:
is this a case of the grass being greener on the other side? i think possibly so...
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I'm not so sure. I don't know of anyone who had done a transitional year thinking, "Gee, I wish I had done prelim." There might be a few, but compared to the opposite case, there are a lot fewer.
 
If you plan to interview at Harvard make sure to tell them you are doing a prelim. The chair does not like transitional years. I did not encounter any other program that cared but some do. This is why Penn and Michigan switched to five year programs.

In my opinion a prelim year is better. You learn more. Some transitional years are a joke. Radiation oncologists work with sick patients with complex diseases some of which are not cancer. But thats just my two cents.
 
phil the thrill said:
If you plan to interview at Harvard make sure to tell them you are doing a prelim. The chair does not like transitional years. I did not encounter any other program that cared but some do.
Click to expand...

Does anyone know of other programs that ask people if they are applying to TYs vs prelim years, and judge the applicants on this basis? I personally want to do my intern year in a certain area, and will apply to both, but will likely rank the TYs over prelims. Do I have to be ready to defend this come interview season?
 
Thought I'd post a reply to my own question.
I'm doing a surgical year at a private hospital. I'm glad I chose it! Lots of oncology experience, learning a lot of hands-on stuff, if you're also thinking about surgical year, I highly recommend it. But be sure you get to a program that has interns scrubbing in on cases frequently! I think surgery or medicine, you'll still have your share of call. And I think it will be helpful when I'm at a tumor board someday and I can talk about operative techniques, because I've been in on many of them. I've been asked multiple times on interviews what kind of intern year I was choosing. Since my choice was a little bit out of the ordinary, I had a well-thought out explanation for it. I think if you have a well-thought out, well presented reason for your choice, it shouldn't matter. I'm happy with my choice. We'll see if it helps me with my rad onc training! Good luck everyone!
A.

Cancerdancer said:
Does anyone know of other programs that ask people if they are applying to TYs vs prelim years, and judge the applicants on this basis? I personally want to do my intern year in a certain area, and will apply to both, but will likely rank the TYs over prelims. Do I have to be ready to defend this come interview season?
Click to expand...
 
If you do prelim internal medicine for the intern year, does it matter whether you involved in a lot or a few procedure (such as central lines, LP, thoracentesis, pelvic exam, etc.) for the future of Rad Onc training/career? Thanks for any advice!
 
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