Fellowship in the middle of residency

[pathdude999]

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Is is possible to start a fellowship before you complete residency and then resume residency once the fellowship is finished? And I'm talking about board-certified fellowships here.

 

[earmuff]

I know of one person who did a cytology fellowship after her second year of AP, and then returned to complete CP after it was over. This was an in-house fellowship that was unfilled, I believe.

 

[KCShaw]

I know people who have done so between 3rd & 4th year of residency. I'm not sure what, if any, accreditation related stipulations there are regarding it.

 

[pathstudent]

It goes on all the time, especially with the quasi subspecialy fellowships in surgpath.

Another unique thing to pathology. You never hear of someone doing Cardiology and then finishing Internal Medicine. Or someone doing reproductive medicine and then finishing OB/GYN.

 

[2121115]

It goes on all the time, especially with the quasi subspecialy fellowships in surgpath.

Another unique thing to pathology. You never hear of someone doing Cardiology and then finishing Internal Medicine. Or someone doing reproductive medicine and then finishing OB/GYN.

You also never hear of an internal medicine resident going on to do a "general medicine" fellowship, but the equivalent happens all of the time in pathology.

 

[kruppe]

You also never hear of an internal medicine resident going on to do a "general medicine" fellowship, but the equivalent happens all of the time in pathology.

Would a chief year in Internal medicine be the equivalent perhaps?

 

[KluverB]

Double-check with the ABP, as the rules have recently changed. You may still be able to do a non-boarded "specialty" like surgpath, gi, gu, etc. out of sequence, and basically have that year count as additional AP training time, but it is my understanding that doing something like heme or cyto out of order (ie. before having completed residency) would be wastage of board eligibility to sit for that sub-specialty board examination, as again, it would just count as additional AP (I suppose CP in case of heme) time for the AP(/CP) boards.

 

[gschl1234]

Is is possible to start a fellowship before you complete residency and then resume residency once the fellowship is finished? And I'm talking about board-certified fellowships here.

Yes, I know of 3 people who did/will do in hemepath and 1 person who did it for cyto. The downside is you have to wait until you're done with residency to take the subspecialty boards, so for these people who did it between 3rd and 4th year of residency, they had to wait till after their 4th year of residency to take hemepath or cyto boards.

 

[pathdude999]

I plan on doing two fellowships. Perhaps I can take the first subspecialty board exam the same period of time I take the second so that I can knock two tests with one trip to tampa.

 

[Ombret]

Subspecialty boards are not all offered at the same time of year and some are not even offered every year (molecular being one example). So your two specific subspecialties may or may not be compatible in that way. But if they are compatible, I do believe the ABP does allow you to take one primary exam and one subspecialty at the same time. Check out their fee schedule, which only makes sense if they allow you do do a combination:

Anatomic pathology only $1800
Clinical pathology only $1800
Anatomic pathology portion of combined AP/CP $1800
Clinical pathology portion of combined AP/CP $1800
Anatomic pathology portion of combined AP/subspecialty $1800
Clinical pathology portion of combined CP/subspecialty $1800
Combined anatomic pathology and clinical pathology $2200
Subspecialty only $1800
Subspecialty portion of combined AP/subspecialty $1800
Subspecialty portion of combined CP/subspecialty $1800