Faculty development fellowships

[teetotaler14]

I've noticed that a few med schools have "faculty development" fellowships in family medicine. Are these fellowships useful for family physicians who want to go into research and/or academics? Also, how difficult/competitive is it to land one of these fellowships?

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[galactus]

I'm doing one now. What's great about these faculty development fellowships is that you can continue working, being the awesome attending you are, and still do a fellowship on the side to learn to become even more awesome. I feel like it is very useful. It can open up a lot of opportunities in academics to publish, be a leader, get research, etc.
In terms of competitiveness, I do not think it's competitive at all. Not all are interested in doing it, and some fellowships out there are really "in-house" fellowships that only applies to current faculty in the medical school. I have friends who have done fellowship outside of their academic institution, where they would travel to another institution for a week or so throughout the course of 1-2 years, but they all had full backing by the department they are currently working at. Basically if you really want to do one, you can get it easily, as long as your chairman approves of it! (This is all assuming you are already working at an academic institution).

 

[zedssssssss]

can you not "slide" into an academic position form FM without the fellowships (i know theres benefits)-- but from people i talked to said it was uselss and other that completed it are just doing FM (without academics)

 

[galactus]

can you not "slide" into an academic position form FM without the fellowships (i know theres benefits)-- but from people i talked to said it was uselss and other that completed it are just doing FM (without academics)

You can. I know a lot of FM attendings who didn't do faculty development fellowships in academics, and they're ok with it. They also have been assistant professors for 20 years and never even bothered to go up the academic chain to associate prof level. If you wanna move up, you have to show some scholarly activity, administration, faculty senate council, be on committees, etc. Faculty development is a good tool to do, although not necessary, to help obtain those goals. Depending on the fellowships, you may get paid for "junior faculty", or worse actual fellow level (PGY-4) salary, but there are others (generally in house) where your salary is the same level, so why not?

 

[zedssssssss]

i have only seen pgy4 salary
i didnt know about in house style salary

 

[galactus]

i have only seen pgy4 salary
i didnt know about in house style salary

My attending salary didn't change during the faculty development fellowship, so that was a definite plus.
PGY-4 salary is a deal breaker.
If you're looking for faculty development fellowships, you'd be surprised by the amount of in-house faculty development opportunities there are in med schools. Just ask your attending!