Dementia fellowship

[buckley]

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I was wondering if anyone could put in their thoughts on Neurologists going into Dementia fellowship. How is the practice? Is it mostly academics? I imagine research potential is great. Where are the great places to train in here in the US, and how competitive should you be? Also if there was a certain personality that would be more happy with such a career path, it would be good to know.
Is it better to fo a behavioral neurology fellowship first? What about Geriatrics? Just thinking about it and gathering info. Thanks!

 

[ask1288]

Universit of Florida - Shands hospital has a very good Behavioral Neurology departments - they have Dr Kenneth Heilman - widely known as the father of Behavioral Neurology, and the Program director of the residency program is also a behavioral neurologist by traiing...

As far as carrers, i think its mainly academic... its hard to be in private practice, and interview patients for an hour each with little reimbursement... but thats just my 2 cents

 

[neurologist]

Universit of Florida - Shands hospital has a very good Behavioral Neurology departments - they have Dr Kenneth Heilman - widely known as the father of Behavioral Neurology, and the Program director of the residency program is also a behavioral neurologist by traiing...

As far as carrers, i think its mainly academic... its hard to be in private practice, and interview patients for an hour each with little reimbursement... but thats just my 2 cents

UCLA and Mayo are also quite good in this area.

Behavioral neuro is one of those things that intrinsically appeals to a certain group of people and you either love it or you don't.

As noted above, it's not a big money-maker in private practice because of reimbursement issues; basically you spend a lot of time with these patients and holding their family's hands and get paid squat.

So if you want to do it, either go all out and be a research-oriented academic (the field does have an interesting future), or just do the fellowship because you like it and try to work it in to your private practice to whatever extent possible, but don't expect to do it full time and make a ton of money at it.

 

[buckley]

Thanks for the inputs!

 

[syrano]

Indeed Kenneth Heilman is the most prominent behavioral neurologist alive I think, and he is well known for his talks (without the use of ppt). He is not the father of behavioral neurology though, that would be his teacher, Norman Geshwind, who was the one to reintroduce concepts long forgotten since Wernicke's time. Two more of Geschind's students are Damasio and Mesulam each of which has contributed to the field.

I would like though to clarify one thing. Dementia is not necessarily behavioral neurology. They are indeed interwoven but different. I tend to think of behavioral neurology as the phenomenology and dementia as one of the etiologies that cause cognitive deficits. I would suggest taking a sneak peak at Heilman's textbook on the subject and see how behavioral neurology is approached.

 

[buckley]

Thanks! I was wondering if there was anyone out there applying this year who would want to share inputs? Anyone who actually went through the process already would be much appreciated.