1 year general PM&R fellowship

[PMR2008]

I just heard about this. (http://www.wfubmc.edu/Neurology/Neurorehabilitation-Fellowship-Program.htm)
From attached PDF sent to residents - "We at Wake Forest offer a one year fellowship in neurorehabilitation. This fellowship offers an in depth experience in inpatient rehabilitation as well as consults, outpatient follow up clinics and INTERVENTIONAL PAIN INJECTION TECHNIQUES. "
"We are offering this fellowship to anyone who has completed an approved residency in Neurology, IM or FM"

Unfortunately the program director is H.Michael Guo, MD, PhD (http://www.wfubmc.edu/Faculty/Guo-Hongtao-Michael.htm) who happens to be one of us.

Does anyone find this shocking? How do they expect someone to learn all that in one year? I am just dumbfounded that I might have to compete with someone who did a 1 year "PM&R" fellowship while I spent 4 years in PM&R residency seeing hundreds of patients with various impairments, doing hundreds of injections and EMGs.
Something has to be done about this to protect our career. What would the reaction be if someone created a 1 year interventional cardiology fellowship open for PM&R residents which will "allow a practioner the chance to increase their earning potential". Shocking.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[PMR 4 MSK]

I just heard about this. (http://www.wfubmc.edu/Neurology/Neurorehabilitation-Fellowship-Program.htm)
From attached PDF sent to residents - "We at Wake Forest offer a one year fellowship in neurorehabilitation. This fellowship offers an in depth experience in inpatient rehabilitation as well as consults, outpatient follow up clinics and INTERVENTIONAL PAIN INJECTION TECHNIQUES. "
"We are offering this fellowship to anyone who has completed an approved residency in Neurology, IM or FM"

Unfortunately the program director is H.Michael Guo, MD, PhD (http://www.wfubmc.edu/Faculty/Guo-Hongtao-Michael.htm) who happens to be one of us.

Does anyone find this shocking? How do they expect someone to learn all that in one year? I am just dumbfounded that I might have to compete with someone who did a 1 year "PM&R" fellowship while I spent 4 years in PM&R residency seeing hundreds of patients with various impairments, doing hundreds of injections and EMGs.
Something has to be done about this to protect our career. What would the reaction be if someone created a 1 year interventional cardiology fellowship open for PM&R residents which will "allow a practioner the chance to earning potential". Shocking.

Yes, I agree 100% with you.

 

[newbie04]

I wonder if the AAPM&R would be interested in looking into this.

 

[fozzy40]

Funny this popped up because I was just having this discussion with one of my attendings today...
There is a very small subset of neurologists that are interested in neurorehabilitation so I've heard of such fellowships. Honestly, the simple notion that you can squeeze the principles of rehabilitation into one year plus learning procedures (i.e. spasticity management, electrodiagnostics, and and spinal procedures) is an extremely tall order. Not to mention learning wound care, pain management, funtional prognosis, functional prognosis, plus ageing issues with some of these chronic neurological diseases. Anyone can learn to do these things but knowing when it's appropriate and how to do it well takes more than one year. I can see offering such fellowships to the neurology residents because they are at least exposed to chronic neurologic disease. It's concerning that they would accept internal medicine and family medicine graduates though since they at least didactically have less exposure to such issues.

Just to play devil's advocate, in the real world there are neurologist that are currently running rehabilitation units. I don't have data to support this but I suspect that neurorehabilitation care is largely underserved. The question is, would you have a semi-trained neurorehabilitationist vs. no care at all?

In my opinion, I think that it's foolish to think that you will learn to take care of this population "well" with such minimal training. I personally don't feel threatened by this however. Fortunately, there are that many fellowships like this. Unfortunately, such fellowships will produce proceduralists who will likely hammer every nail.

fozzy40

 

[PMR2008]

I wonder if the AAPM&R would be interested in looking into this.

They have been informed. It will be interesting to see how they respond to this.

 

[fozzy40]

Technically, they are advertising a "neurorehabilitation" fellowship which is kind of a loose term. If they were advertising a "PM&R Fellowship" I think that the AAPM&R would be more vocal and there would likely be some sort of legal recourse. However, since they are not claiming to by "physiatrists" I'm not sure if there is anything to be said about this.

 

[AndyDufrane]

Wow, I can not believe what I am reading about a 1 year general PMR fellowship that will increase competition for us from Neurologist, FM, and IM, I don't even know where to begin with this, especially since a physiatrist is the fellowship director. I think I am going to hurl, yes, why doesn't somebody start 1 year fellowships in interventional cardiology, interventional radiology, and cytopathology so that PMR docs can also increase our earning potential , this is crazy, not to mention will churn out subpar "rehabilitation" providers.

 

[Brooklyndo2.1]

can I do a one year medicosurgical fellowship with invasive cardiology, EP cardio, rheum, some invasive cardiothoracic surgery, oh anf I really enjoy aneurism clipping in neurosurg... can we design tht fellowship?


I think the money making aspect here is dangerous to any felllow if they get in trouble malpractice wise as in " SO Dr X , how many LESI's did you do in your year as a fellow?"

IDK ,my humble opinion