Doing a second fellowship?

[SmallBird]

I had my heart set on CAP until I fell in love with addictions during a recent rotation. This has not diluted my interest in CAP but just made me think about the best ways I can do both - the obvious answer being to include a component of adolescent addictions in my future practise.

Is any body familiar with others practising in this area in academic settings? I am considering whether or not it makes the most sense to fast track into CAP and then do an addictions fellowship after, or whether I should try and do extra addictions work during residency and aim to only do a CAP fellowship. It is, unfortunately, not so simple that I can decide after my CAP fellowship as I have a complex visa process to navigate (not important to explain the details, but suffice to say if I want to do two fellowships I need to decide that before starting the first). I am aware that an addiction fellowship does not offer any advantages in terms of being certified for additionall procedures or anything, but at the same time I think that there are considerable advantages in terms of becoming more comfortable in doing psychotherapy and medication management with these patients.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated!

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[MacDonaldTriad]

I think you see this right. Do as much addictions as you can in your PGY-III year and fast track into child. This will give you 6 years with the option of stopping after 5. The other way around is 7 year for sure. This is assuming of course that just doing adult is not likely, or that you are 90% sure of addiction and so so on child. If child>>addiction, fast track. This road is long enough.

 

[F0nzie]

If you have the stamina, fast track into CAP then do the addiction psych fellowship.

 

[vistaril]

I had my heart set on CAP until I fell in love with addictions during a recent rotation. This has not diluted my interest in CAP but just made me think about the best ways I can do both - the obvious answer being to include a component of adolescent addictions in my future practise.

Is any body familiar with others practising in this area in academic settings? I am considering whether or not it makes the most sense to fast track into CAP and then do an addictions fellowship after, or whether I should try and do extra addictions work during residency and aim to only do a CAP fellowship. It is, unfortunately, not so simple that I can decide after my CAP fellowship as I have a complex visa process to navigate (not important to explain the details, but suffice to say if I want to do two fellowships I need to decide that before starting the first). I am aware that an addiction fellowship does not offer any advantages in terms of being certified for additionall procedures or anything, but at the same time I think that there are considerable advantages in terms of becoming more comfortable in doing psychotherapy and medication management with these patients.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated!

do a child fellowship(fasttrack) and just pick up some addiction skills during your general adult residency and child fellowship. Skip the whole addiction fellowship alltogether.

 

[notdeadyet]

I think you see this right. Do as much addictions as you can in your PGY-III year and fast track into child. This will give you 6 years with the option of stopping after 5. The other way around is 7 year for sure. This is assuming of course that just doing adult is not likely, or that you are 90% sure of addiction and so so on child. If child>>addiction, fast track. This road is long enough.

Ditto this. Many people talk of doing an additional fellowship after child, but that extra year seems to nip it in the bud.

You have more opportunities to work with youth with substance issues with CAP and no addiction fellowship than you will with an addiction fellowship and no CAP.

 

[billypilgrim37]

I dealt with this same decision last year at length (much of it on here), and was very close to deciding on pursuing the addiction fellowship. I applied, interviewed, and basically the place where I wanted to go (my medical school) had decided they weren't going to officially offer me a spot until they had interviewed everybody (as they weren't sure if the GME funding was going to let them have 1 or 2 slots). I had to make a decision about a particular attending job in the same time period. If the fellowship had offered me the slot sooner, I probably would have done it. But they couldn't, and I took the job. I interviewed at my home program and was offered the slot, but my wife lives in the city where I went to medical school, and if I was going to have a flexible one year, I wanted to do it away with her. Both had good training.

I think I would have been happy either way, but I will say that the idea of finishing last year with the prospect of another year of training hanging over my head would have been excruciating as all of my friends worked on getting a real job. It's terrible how much the CAP and addictions worlds do not overlap, and while the addiction fellowship is certainly valuable, whether it's valuable enough to justify another year of being a trainee instead of moving along and starting to actually work in the field is not clear. I would suggest the best thing to do is get as much CAP addiction experience you can as a fellow and look for jobs that will allow you the opportunity to work with this population. Otherwise, Colorado and MUSC probably have the strongest adolescent addiction programs. UW has one that I know less about but looks fairly well built. There are probably a few others. Kentucky, for example, has a good adolescent addiction specialist who is chief of the child service line.

Explore it, but know you'll probably be happy either way. One way lets you buy a new bed faster.