EM Fellowships- Occ Med and Sports

[miacomet]

Has anyone done fellowship in Occupational Medicine or Sports Medicine, bonus points for mid to late career?

Would love any thoughts or info or experiences

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[RustedFox]

Is this the part where I make the obligatory sports medicine joke, then concede that "yeah, I'm minimizing it; it was a joke guys, a joke" ?

 

[Rekt]

Has anyone done fellowship in Occupational Medicine or Sports Medicine, bonus points for mid to late career?

Would love any thoughts or info or experiences

I’ve worked with docs that left and did occ med without any fellowship. Doubt it’s necessary.

 

[DeadCactus]

Occ Med is a 2 year pathway if you don't already have an MPH. Probably don't need the BC to find work in the field but you probably won't be competitive for the better gigs.

 

[miacomet]

Occ Med is a 2 year pathway if you don't already have an MPH. Probably don't need the BC to find work in the field but you probably won't be competitive for the better gigs.

Better gigs being academia or ???

 

[DeadCactus]

Better gigs being academia or ???

I'm purely an outside observer but it seems like there are some desirable medicolegal, leadership, government, and industry jobs/contracts that people aim for. Maybe it's all smoke, I don't know. I'd reach out to some of the programs and ask for alumni contact information if you're really interested.

 

[BreadXray]

I'm an Occ Med doc visiting the forum. I can offer some thoughts for attendings thinking about making a switch.

There are 2 main types of pure Occ Med jobs out there:

1. Occupational medicine staff physician - Worker's Comp (think urgent care for work injuries with some patient continuity), employee preplacement exams, surveillance exams (Asbestos, Lead, etc.).
2. Occupational health director - A mix of clinical and administrative work (primarily developing and reviewing protocols). At large enough places, you will be fully non-clinical; at very small places, you may be almost fully clinical.

Number 1 is the job that anyone boarded in any specialty can get. Number 2 is the job that strongly prefers occ med board certification, especially at medical centers, government positions, and corporations.

Then there are some less-common paths people take in the occ med world:

1. Academic OEM - These are the departments that will do environmental exposure consults and treatment as well as research.
2. EHS/Occ Med consulting - These are people who developed an industrial niche and now work to provide EHS and Occ Med services for clients (often large corporations).
3. Government agency work - Federal OSHA and NIOSH are obvious fits as well as their state counterparts.
4. IMEs (independent medical exams) - If you can get a good referral base from insurance companies, you can make a decent chunk of money in this route.
5. MROs (medical review officer) - A lot of the Occ Med positions require you be an MRO, so some people are then able to just do MRO work full time.

Numbers 1-3 are exclusive to occ med trained folks. Number 4 by its nature will be heavily limited to occ med-boarded folks or subspecialists in other fields. Number 5 can be done by anyone.

A lot of people make a full career working in Occ Med with board certification in other fields. If you decide you want to get board certified in Occ Med, you could choose to enter a full-time residency/fellowship, but you also have two additional options which would allow you to continue working as an attending and thus would be much less onerous from a financial standpoint:

• Enter what is essentially a part-time residency at some programs through the "Complementary Pathway" of the ABMP. Not every residency offers this, so you would need to specifically reach out to programs and ask if they offer that option and how it would work for you.
• The University of Pennsylvania offers an "External Track" where you need to find someone at work to mentor you and you go to Philadelphia periodically for some didactic training. This is somewhat of a similar setup to executive MBAs.

Do note that if you go down one of these routes, you may have to get an MPH on your own.

If you are interested in pursuing formal training, I've written more about the process here: A brief introduction to Occupational Medicine Residency

Finally, if you do want to go into occ med, you need to be ok with making $240,000-$260,000 per year for M-F 9-5 (no nights, weekends, or holidays). If you go into the less common paths that are more entrepreneurial (consulting, IMEs, MRO work), you could make a lot more working a lot less, though.

 

[bravotwozero]

Thanks for that informative post @BreadXray, and welcome to the forum! Please keep coming back and posting more!

 

[Frazier]

I'm an Occ Med doc visiting the forum. I can offer some thoughts for attendings thinking about making a switch.

There are 2 main types of pure Occ Med jobs out there:

1. Occupational medicine staff physician - Worker's Comp (think urgent care for work injuries with some patient continuity), employee preplacement exams, surveillance exams (Asbestos, Lead, etc.).
2. Occupational health director - A mix of clinical and administrative work (primarily developing and reviewing protocols). At large enough places, you will be fully non-clinical; at very small places, you may be almost fully clinical.

Number 1 is the job that anyone boarded in any specialty can get. Number 2 is the job that strongly prefers occ med board certification, especially at medical centers, government positions, and corporations.

Then there are some less-common paths people take in the occ med world:

1. Academic OEM - These are the departments that will do environmental exposure consults and treatment as well as research.
2. EHS/Occ Med consulting - These are people who developed an industrial niche and now work to provide EHS and Occ Med services for clients (often large corporations).
3. Government agency work - Federal OSHA and NIOSH are obvious fits as well as their state counterparts.
4. IMEs (independent medical exams) - If you can get a good referral base from insurance companies, you can make a decent chunk of money in this route.
5. MROs (medical review officer) - A lot of the Occ Med positions require you be an MRO, so some people are then able to just do MRO work full time.

Numbers 1-3 are exclusive to occ med trained folks. Number 4 by its nature will be heavily limited to occ med-boarded folks or subspecialists in other fields. Number 5 can be done by anyone.

A lot of people make a full career working in Occ Med with board certification in other fields. If you decide you want to get board certified in Occ Med, you could choose to enter a full-time residency/fellowship, but you also have two additional options which would allow you to continue working as an attending and thus would be much less onerous from a financial standpoint:

• Enter what is essentially a part-time residency at some programs through the "Complementary Pathway" of the ABMP. Not every residency offers this, so you would need to specifically reach out to programs and ask if they offer that option and how it would work for you.
• The University of Pennsylvania offers an "External Track" where you need to find someone at work to mentor you and you go to Philadelphia periodically for some didactic training. This is somewhat of a similar setup to executive MBAs.

Do note that if you go down one of these routes, you may have to get an MPH on your own.

If you are interested in pursuing formal training, I've written more about the process here: A brief introduction to Occupational Medicine Residency

Finally, if you do want to go into occ med, you need to be ok with making $240,000-$260,000 per year for M-F 9-5 (no nights, weekends, or holidays). If you go into the less common paths that are more entrepreneurial (consulting, IMEs, MRO work), you could make a lot more working a lot less, though.

Great post. Thanks for the info!