Disadvantages of Non-ACGME Accredited Pain Programs

[Crybaby]

ACGME will make life a lot easier on the back side of things.

I did non ACGME and had very good training and numbers-wise came out ahead of what you would get in a large academic center.

I get pushed around a bit in hospital administers or nurses in suits asking me if I am sure I know how to do an epidural...... or a hip injection. That is the downside. In my state, I have no problems obtaining malpractice or with reimbursements.

I do think it is silly since at these same hospitals and surgery centers they do have PAs or techs doing all the arthrograms and myelograms.

Regarding the comment on NASS, I was interested in one of there spinal cord stimulator courses and if I remember correctly a requirement they had about attending was being ACGME pain trained or a neurosurgeon. It has been a few years since I have looked into that however.

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[sdnuser001]

Dang sucks to hear this as I just accepted an interventional spine fellowship at a top tier university and had thought getting on insurances wasn't really going to be an issue...

 

[Bostonspine]

Dang sucks to hear this as I just accepted an interventional spine fellowship at a top tier university and had thought getting on insurances wasn't really going to be an issue...

Did a non-accreditated fellowship and got privileged without issues. The quote from the administrator most likely can from a competitor. Neuro will question you EMG/ncs ability, anesthesia will question you fellowship even if they have non fellowship trained docs doing pain 1 day a week... ect I promise if you working for ortho or neurosurgery no one will question anything MD or PA lol

 

[PinchandBurn]

I think most applicants recognize that a good ACGME fellowship is the clearly the way to go.

The problem is that there are many terrible ACGME pain fellowships where you don't learn much in a year, mediocre attendings, didactics, and poor procedural training and there are some non ACGME fellowships particularly spine fellowships at academic institutions that provide great procedural training including better training in kypho, stim implants, vertiflex, etc, as well as triple the numbers of bread/butter procedures, and they still have decent didactics.

Those types of non ACGME fellowships are a better educational experience than the worst third of the ACGME fellowships.

Clearly there are also many non acgme fellowships particularly private (non university based) fellowships that don't have didactics, don't really teach you much after the first 3 months, etc. These are worse than the worse third of ACGME fellowships and worse than all the top academic spine fellowships.

But the struggle for many applicants is what to do if they can't get into a good ACGME fellowship and so they are faced with either getting the ACGME piece of paper from a bad fellowship, but having terrible training vs getting great training from an academic spine fellowship, but dealing with issues during their practical career because they don't have the piece of paper.

Agreed.

However..fyi..many stated. Mine in particular now REQUIRE acgme for certain procedures and med mgt. So get it ideally

 

[SgtThunderfistMD]

non-anes/pmr doing non-accredited fellowship.....gonna have a tough time finding a job. even if you do, you will be low-balled.