Can IM/EM prog grads apply for subspecialty fellowships?

[chicamedica]

I thought as long as you're board certified in IM, you're eligible to apply for any IM fellowship (cards, GI, pulm, ID, etc)., regardless of whether one does straight IM or IM/EM. However someone on this board suggested IM/EM combined grads cannot apply for fellowships, but wasn't sure. Does anyone know for sure what the deal is?

Thanks a lot.

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[johnd]

IM/EM grads can apply for IM fellowships. The question is why would you do an IM/EM combined residency if you are planning to do an IM fellowship?

 

[chicamedica]

because I also love EM, and I feel that any IM fellowship (not to mention an IM education) will make an EM physician that much stronger. Also I'd like to divide my time between IM and EM in my career, and I have certain interests within IM, such as ID, CCM, and Cards, one of which I might consider pursuing as a fellowship.

 

[johnd]

Well to each his/her own but that is really a difficult path. After all that training it is pretty unlikely that you would find a position where you are combining em/im/im subspecialist. Most likely you will end up practicing in just one of those areas. It sure would be nice to try to decide what you want to do beforehand and skip all of those extraneous years of training.

 

[chicamedica]

true, I'm only an MS-III, so I might end up ruling something out by the time I'll be applying for residencies. Right now I can't decide between the two (IM vs. EM)--both have different things that I really like.

 

[Apollyon]

Originally posted by johnd
Well to each his/her own but that is really a difficult path. After all that training it is pretty unlikely that you would find a position where you are combining em/im/im subspecialist. Most likely you will end up practicing in just one of those areas. It sure would be nice to try to decide what you want to do beforehand and skip all of those extraneous years of training.

IM/EM/CC has been mentioned at length other places on this board; it apparently is not pretty unlikely to find places where you do EM one block, IM/floor/hospitalist another, and/or ICU/MICU another block. There are people in Detroit, Pittsburgh, and New York City doing it.

Beyond critical care, IM/EM/Tox is another power hitter - especially in this day and age, you can almost write your own ticket in the bioterrorism market.

One I haven't heard of is IM/EM/Cards - but, at 8 years, it's on par with CT surgery, and there is at least one program (UVa) that has an EM/Emergency Cardiovascular fellowship.

Other IM fellowships would be of ostensibly lesser utility to the IM/EM grad.

 

[chicamedica]

Thanks Apollyon, that was really helpful.

I keep hearing about IM/EM/CCM at Pittsburgh on this board, but I haven't really seen anything about that program existing, neither on FRIEDA nor elsewhere on the WWW, and as a med student here at Pitt, I haven't really heard about it around the hallways at Pitt either. Somebody mentioned it being listed on ERAS. Is anyone applying to that program or know more about its existence? This has got to be the first year it's being offered, if it's really true.