I am at a mid tier medical school and am 4 months off cycle. First two months were because I delayed step and one was because of personal life issues (divorce) and one is to study for step 2.
I don't start my first em away rotation until late October and do my second one late November.
What are recommendations about what I should do?
I discussed with my advisor at school who mentioned that he doesn't see the benefit of me extending a year to graduate.
Originally I thought to do a family medicine residency back up with a fellowship in EM however I will never be aaem certified in em.
Thank you
I'll shoot, although take this with salt since I've grown to hate academia and have tried my best to avoid it since I finished residency last year:
Depends what
you want.
If you'd really prefer to start residency next year, and FM will take you on this delayed schedule, then do FM.
If you want EM, I don't see a way around delaying your match for a year. Generally interview decisions are made after ACEP in late Oct/early Nov, which will be before you have any SLOEs available.
You can try applying for both this year if you want to hedge, but in the absence of other info, delaying Step 1 is also a minor red flag. So you'd likely just be wasting your money on the EM applications.
Other ideas include (1) focusing on the new/uncredentialed/unproven corporate EM re$idencie$ this year, which comes with its own set of risks, and (2) going for an IM or surgery internship to start next year and then trying to get EM from there. (2) will at least get you a clinical job and likely a stronger application for the year after, at the cost of possibly being too insanely busy to reattempt all this academicopolitical BS when the match reopens in a year. There are lots of threads on SDN about that strategy.
You can still work in rural ERs with FM board certification. That can be a politically hot topic on here. However, in 5 years it may be a moot point as the corporate medicine machine creates more and more EM docs who are then forced to work rural gigs. (Nothing against rural gigs... I prefer them myself. It's just that the compensation for full-time tends to be lower than my main urban gig.)
Nitpick: it's
ABEM-certified, not AAEM-certified. AAEM doesn't certify anything, although this whole career ladder would probably be more fun if they did.
