Adolescent Medicine

[NiteOwl]

I have a question about adolescent medicine. How long is the residency or fellowship for it? I have heard that you do a residency in either pediatrics, internal medicine, or family practice, and then you do a fellowship in adolescent medicine. Is that true? This might be a dumb question, but what exactly is a fellowship? I am a pre-med right now, so all I have really read about is medical school and residency, and not much about fellowships and such. Thanks for any info

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[notstudying]

I have a question about adolescent medicine. How long is the residency or fellowship for it? I have heard that you do a residency in either pediatrics, internal medicine, or family practice, and then you do a fellowship in adolescent medicine. Is that true? This might be a dumb question, but what exactly is a fellowship? I am a pre-med right now, so all I have really read about is medical school and residency, and not much about fellowships and such. Thanks for any info

Hi! Not stupid questions at all... Adolescent medicine is a fellowship, which is additional training after residency to further specialize. You can do adolescent medicine after peds, internal medicine, or family practice. Last I heard it is a 3 year fellowship after peds, but only a 2 year after IM or FP, because of the rules governing licensure from the ABP vs ABFP and ABIM. This is on top of the 3 year residency for Peds, IM, or FP; you could also go into it from combined med-peds, which is a 4 year residency. Check out the Society for Adolescent Medicine website for more info (http://www.adolescenthealth.org/).

-NS

 

[NiteOwl]

Hi! Not stupid questions at all... Adolescent medicine is a fellowship, which is additional training after residency to further specialize. You can do adolescent medicine after peds, internal medicine, or family practice. Last I heard it is a 3 year fellowship after peds, but only a 2 year after IM or FP, because of the rules governing licensure from the ABP vs ABFP and ABIM. This is on top of the 3 year residency for Peds, IM, or FP; you could also go into it from combined med-peds, which is a 4 year residency. Check out the Society for Adolescent Medicine website for more info (http://www.adolescenthealth.org/).

-NS

Thanks for relpying. Also, I have another question, what is the difference between pediatrics and med-peds? I sometimes see posts here where people mention med-peds, but I am not sure what it is.

I hope the my descision on what area of medicine I want to go into will be an easier choice once I get into medical school. I was wanting to do FP, but I have noticed that so many of FP's patients are older, like mostly over 40, with a few pediatric and young adult patients. Because of that, I then thought about pediatrics, but I didn't want tons on infant and patients under age of 3. I don't want to do IM, because I want to treat kids and teens too. Adolescent medicine sounds great, but it is 5 years of training total...I had originally wanted to be a surgeon (general surgery), but didn't want to have the 5 year residency. Some people have suggested doing FP, and tailoring the practice (kind of like only taking a certain amount of patients from each age group), so that I didn't end up with lots of older patients. I really want to treat all ages, but was afraid of FP because I thought I might end up with a majority if patients aged 40-70 (which I don't want). I know that is the age when people are most likely to get sick, but I still want some kids, teens, and people in the 20-30's range too.

 

[notstudying]

Thanks for relpying. Also, I have another question, what is the difference between pediatrics and med-peds? I sometimes see posts here where people mention med-peds, but I am not sure what it is.

I hope the my descision on what area of medicine I want to go into will be an easier choice once I get into medical school. I was wanting to do FP, but I have noticed that so many of FP's patients are older, like mostly over 40, with a few pediatric and young adult patients. Because of that, I then thought about pediatrics, but I didn't want tons on infant and patients under age of 3. I don't want to do IM, because I want to treat kids and teens too. Adolescent medicine sounds great, but it is 5 years of training total...I had originally wanted to be a surgeon (general surgery), but didn't want to have the 5 year residency. Some people have suggested doing FP, and tailoring the practice (kind of like only taking a certain amount of patients from each age group), so that I didn't end up with lots of older patients. I really want to treat all ages, but was afraid of FP because I thought I might end up with a majority if patients aged 40-70 (which I don't want). I know that is the age when people are most likely to get sick, but I still want some kids, teens, and people in the 20-30's range too.

Med Peds is a combined internal medicine and pediatrics program-it combines the core curriculum of both residencies into 4 years, and you are board certified in both (if you pass both exams ). Unlike FP, you don't do any obstetrics. FP also has far far less pediatric training than you get in MP, which I think is one of the reasons their practices tend to have fewer kids. MP practices tend to have younger adults, and many more children (often parents with young children).

Try not to worry too much at this stage of the game about how long the training will be! If you love surgery, the 5 years will pass quickly and will be worth it in the long run. Likewise, an extra 2-3 years to train in adolescent medicine (and it's MUCH better than residency in terms of hours!) will be well worth it if that's what you want to do, as would the extra year of training to do med-peds (I seriously considered MP but after my medicine rotation decided I really could be very happy never treating an adult again!).

Good luck!

 

[NiteOwl]

Med-peds sounds like a good idea, it basically sounds like what I am looking for. A 4 year residency instead of a 3 year isn't too bad, especially if it allows me to do "family practice" with more pediatric patients.

Adolescent medicine originally just seemed like the closest thing that I would want to do. Because family practice seemed to have to many older adults and pediatrics had to many infants. I used to wish there were doctors that treat ages 5-40, but I knew that wasn't really a possibility. Then I heard about adolescent medicine, treating ages about 10-early 20's. That sounded good because I wouldn't have to worry about getting too many patients of a certain age.

Like I had said FP sounded good because I wanted to treat adults and kids, but I am afraid that a lot of my patients would be older. I have noticed that many FPs have lots of patients that are "old", and I am not talking about 40 or 50, but like elderly/geriatric. I don't hate older people or anything, but I would hate to treat mostly that age.

So thanks for that info, med-peds sounds like something I want to do. I don't want to do any obstetrics, but I don't think all FPs do that anyway (the FP I go to doesnt). So what do med-ped doctors call themselves/how do they describe themselves? I mean pediatric are called pediatricians, nurology are neurologists etc...so what are med-ped doctors called?