Changing Sub-Specialty Within Oncology

[thisampgoestoeleven]

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If I am interested in a highly specialized disease (e.g., pancreas) and i cannot find a job, should I get an academic job in a different disease (e.g., breast, melanoma) or am I just better of going into PP? How hard is it to change disease types within academia?

 

[HoldTheCoffee]

It's pretty doable, from what I've observed, provided that they really need that spot and find you to be a desirable candidate overall. It's not uncommon to spend fellowship focused on one disease group but then end up focusing on something else. Usually when I've seen this happen, the group will let you work with some of the other attendings for a brief amount of time until you are caught up again in that specific area.

 

[gutonc]

If you're going to do something super specialized in the hopes of getting a clinical academic job, try to keep your hand in at least one other tumor type throughout fellowship. It should be something super common ( lung, breast, prostate) or super specialized (foregut neuroendocrine) as the former will make you more marketable overall and the latter will make you stand out and more likely to land another academic gig.