Allergy job market

[deleted595450]

I am a PGY 2 IM resident. I am deciding between rheum and allergy. I like the patient population of allergy - young age relatively healthy. I like that vast majority of patients are happy. The only thing that is keeping me from applying to allergy is the job market. My assessment is that it is not that good - only 50 jobs on AAAAI website. I have also heard stories about difficult job market. I am thus leaning towards rheum. The only other thing would be to apply to combined programs but I do not know if there is any benefit of rheum/ allergy combination. Any thoughts?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[bronx43]

Rheum job market is pretty good. You can more or less pick where you want to go, and there are usually a few jobs that can accommodate you. There's no point to do a combined fellowship unless you want to do academia.

 

[UncommonVariable]

It depends on a lot of variables. If you're a good allergist-immunologist....you can open shop anywhere. If you want to run a shot factory....I would not recommend allergy. Thankfully, this is not the major focus of my practice. "Only 50 jobs"....most jobs are not posted and there are not a lot of fellows graduating...you have to cold call places (call practices in the area you're interested in). Also, you need to feel comfortable negotiating salary/partnership. I think a combined fellowship would be a great option to pursue. I was exposed to a lot of rheum during my AI fellowship, so I care for them in my practice....it all depends on your comfort level. I think rheum or AI are both great options.

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

I am a PGY 2 IM resident. I am deciding between rheum and allergy. I like the patient population of allergy - young age relatively healthy. I like that vast majority of patients are happy. The only thing that is keeping me from applying to allergy is the job market. My assessment is that it is not that good - only 50 jobs on AAAAI website. I have also heard stories about difficult job market. I am thus leaning towards rheum. The only other thing would be to apply to combined programs but I do not know if there is any benefit of rheum/ allergy combination. Any thoughts?

Do electives on allergy/immuno and rheum. Allergy and immunodeficiency can be quite different so it's a bit of a bipolar specialty (you could be managing very ill infected children keeping them alive until their bone marrow transplant or you could be managing asthma in an elderly adult). Rheum I think is a little more uniform but there's also the dichotomy of immunodysregulatory disorders (which have overlap and are managed by some A/Is - things like periodic fever syndromes, etc.) vs. MSK/connective tissue/autoimmunity disorders. If you really can't decide it's fortunately NOT uncommon to see people do dual fellowship in rheum and A/I.

Also would encourage you to do electives in ID and heme/onc+/-BMT as there is significant overlap in the clinical approach with these fields and you may find your niche there instead.

 

[drfunktacular]

I've had 2 "real jobs" so far and neither were posted anywhere--I got both by cold-calling practices where I wanted to work. So don't let job postings be your metric of the job market or determine your career path

Job market in rheum is pretty wide open most places as bronx43 noted; the most recent ACR workforce estimate predicts something like 5000 FTE shortage by 2020 nationwide . I don't have any personal knowledge of the A/I market, although as far as I know people still get allergies and asthma

I also strongly agree with the advice above to do electives in both if you haven't already. I was in your same boat as a resident, and by week 2 of my allergy rotation I knew I could never do A/I because I found the day to day practice to be mind-numbingly boring ("oh you're still having rhinitis? have you been using your flonase? no? ok well use your flonase. see you in 6 months"), whereas I found rheum clinic to be much more exciting day to day; YMMV.

Except in very unusual circumstances (you have a specific research career in mind, or you are extremely entrepreneurial and want to open your own clinic and employ 10 mid-levels) I do not think people are well-served by the rheum-A/I combined programs. Almost nobody ends up doing both in practice, and in the meantime you've spent an extra unnecessary year in training, the opportunity cost of which may exceed $200k depending on what kind of job you get upon graduation.