I was curious do all people applying for anesthesia residency do an preliminary year for surgery first, and then apply for anesthesia? Or do you just apply for pgy1 anesthesia, and they place you in first year of surgery. Can someone explain how each path works? Thanks.
anesthesia residency how it works for applying
- Thread starter gudboydoc
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It's complicated. But to quickly answer your question, no one does either of the two options you described above -- so I'm glad you came here.
Most applicants are applying during their 4th year of medical school -- FMGs will have a different timeline, of course. Depending on the anesthesiology residency program, the program either bundles the internship in (this is called "categorical") or doesn't (this is called "advanced"), or, just to mess with you, they offer some categorical and some advanced spots per year. How many of which type is on FREIDA and on the program's website, of course.
If you are applying to advanced anesthesiology programs, that means you're on your own for your PGY-1 ("preliminary" year). That means you have to apply to, and interview at, and rank, a variety of prelim programs -- whether that's medicine, surgery, transitional, peds, etc, etc, etc, is up to you. Again, FREIDA and your geographical predilections are helpful here. The optimal # of such programs has been discussed on various threads here again and again -- so do a search.
Then, when ranking time comes around (February of your 4th year -- aka February of the same year that you start PGY-1 in July) you rank your categorical programs, or your advanced+prelim programs.
I think you misunderstood fakin's post. There are two types of programs: advanced and categorical. You could decide to apply to only categorical or only advanced programs, but realistically most people apply to both. Applying to advanced programs means that you must secure a preliminary year on your own (if you haven't already done one).
I'm assuming you're a fourth year med student. This means you will apply to advanced anesthesia, categorical anesthesia, and preliminary year programs all at the same time. In this case, I believe there are more categorical positions than advanced, maybe about 2:1 ratio.
If you are currently doing a preliminary year, then applying to advanced anesthesia programs is much different, as most of these spots have already been secured by the MS4s who applied the year before.
