Anatomy/Research Fellowship between 2/3 year

[TheBoneDoctah]

Hello everyone!

I'm looking for some advice on a situation that I have been going back and forth on the last few days.

I am a 29 year old D.O. student interested in orthopedic surgery. My medical school offers an anatomy fellowship program where, in between your 2nd and 3rd year of medical school, you take a year to conduct research, teach, and make connections with surgeons from around the area who use the anatomy lab. Some of the surgeons/residents are from a nearby residency program that has a connection with our school. As of now, I do not have any research and I know with the merger research will be playing a larger role in the selection process. The main reasons that I would want to do the fellowship is for the research and connections (not so much the teaching aspect). They do this program every year and the fellows that work on research end up publishing and some end up presenting their work at conferences. Here are my pros/cons:

Pros:
- make connections with residents/surgeons from the residency program I am interested in
- gain research experience and hopefully publish work
- gain teaching experience
- gain surgical skills by working with general/orthopedic surgeons as they run through procedures with us
- compensation package 1-year of tuition (47k) + 28k stipend

Cons:
- haven't taken boards yet, so if I don't make competitive board scores, I won't really need the fellowship because I won't be applying orthopedics and I will be stuck in it.
- loss of a year of attending salary
- already 29 years old, so I would be delayed ANOTHER year
- loans accruing interest another year

Our school also has an orthopedic honors track which I was accepted to. The track will allow me to have more rotations in orthopedics and hopefully more opportunities during my 3/4 clinical rotations. The only reason I bring this up is because if I didn't do the fellowship, I could POSSIBLY get some research during my 3/4 years of medical school, but the research most likely won't be as good due to lack of time.

Anyone have any suggestions?

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[AlteredScale]

I think you should do it. Paging @OrthoTraumaMD @SouthernSurgeon !

 

[AdmiralChz]

Our school also has an orthopedic honors track which I was accepted to. The track will allow me to have more rotations in orthopedics and hopefully more opportunities during my 3/4 clinical rotations.

Interesting, I've never heard of such a thing but with so many schools it makes sense I suppose. The major question is: What is the recent match success for students in this program? Has this extra year increased the percentage of successful orthopedic MD match? What have others who completed the extra year had to say about it?

 

[TheBoneDoctah]

Interesting, I've never heard of such a thing but with so many schools it makes sense I suppose. The major question is: What is the recent match success for students in this program? Has this extra year increased the percentage of successful orthopedic MD match? What have others who completed the extra year had to say about it?

Thank you for your response. So you quoted the part from my post about the "orthopedic honors track" that my school offers which is different from the "anatomy fellowship" which is what I am applying for (and recently accepted) which is the yearlong thing. The honors track is fairly new to our school, so we are still not 100% sure on everything it entails, but from what I understand, being in the orthopedic honors track will give me more orthopedic rotations (I think one of our general surgery rotations is swapped for an orthopedic rotation) and more time to make connections with the surgeons from the area. It also shows up on our transcript as "orthopedic honors track applicant" for residency. This probably doesn't mean much, but it won't hurt I suppose. As far as success of matching into orthopedic residencies from this honors track, we don't know yet because the first class that has gone through it hasn't matched yet. We will see next year.

As far as the anatomy fellowship (which is the yearlong thing between 2nd and 3rd year), one of the students who matched into orthopedics this year was in the fellowship and said it was really good for making connections with residents and attendings, gaining surgical knowledge, mastering the anatomy, and gaining research in orthopedics (conferences and publications).

I know the fellowship couldn't hurt, except for the extra year which I know will lose me a year of attending salary, but I decided to purse the fellowship with the hope that I do well on my boards and am in a position to apply to orthopedic residencies when that time comes.