Fellowships that are not useful

[jarafernando]

I think certain pediatric fellowships are useless. You waste your time (all peds fellowships are 3 years)
I know peds hematologists/pulmonologists working as hospitalist
During covid they got laid off also
What are other specialties you need to avoid ( if your heart is in the specialty then its a different story)

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[GoSpursGo]

So I think this is obvious, but a job market being poor isn’t the same thing as a specialty being useless.

No doubt, there are some specialties which are tight. Several specialties basically require you to be very flexible on location, and/or willing to stay in academia and compete for external grant funding. Naturally, if one is willing to do those things, then the fellowship may well be worth it. I strongly advise prospective applicants to have an honest conversation with fellows (attendings who are already well-established may not be aware of the realities out there) within their field of choice before choosing to apply so that they can walk into the application with eyes open.

 

[jarafernando]

yes , job market for Peds Subspecialties like pulmonology and Hematology are very tight .
Becuase general pediatricians manage asthma and chronic lung disease better than pulmonologist

 

[ThoracicGuy]

I think certain pediatric fellowships are useless. You waste your time (all peds fellowships are 3 years)
I know peds hematologists/pulmonologists working as hospitalist
During covid they got laid off also
What are other specialties you need to avoid ( if your heart is in the specialty then its a different story)

 

[LucidSplash]

It is nice to see this meme appropriately used outside the Surgery forum.

 

[FutureInternist]

I like this one

 

[ortnakas]

Not useful? Or just not lucrative? There’s a difference.

Additionally, you can make a decent income at any specialty. Obviously, you’re not going to be as rich in nephrology or pediatric endocrinology as neurointerventional radiology, but it’s still needed and if it’s what will make want to go to work every day, it’s worth it.

 

[hallowmann]

Not useful? Or just not lucrative? There’s a difference.

Additionally, you can make a decent income at any specialty. Obviously, you’re not going to be as rich in nephrology or pediatric endocrinology as neurointerventional radiology, but it’s still needed and if it’s what will make want to go to work every day, it’s worth it.

I think what is most striking from the OP is: "What are other specialties you need to avoid ( if your heart is in the specialty then its a different story)"

Why would anyone be doing fellowship if their heart wasn't in it? Can I just say that no one should do a fellowship if they don't actually like/enjoy the field. That's a recipe for the buyer's remorse we end up seeing when people want to leave fellowship and come here to ask if it's OK.

 

[Neuronix]

Any radiation oncology fellowship. None are accredited, most do not teach skills you couldn't learn in a good residency program, and most don't increase pay or competitiveness for jobs outside of tiny niches which you may not even be able to get a job in. Most of the people running these programs were not fellowship trained themselves.

This is just a symptom of a really bad job market. Some people don't get jobs at all after residency or really need to work in a certain location, so they have to take a fellowship.

 

[greatnt249]

I think what is most striking from the OP is: "What are other specialties you need to avoid ( if your heart is in the specialty then its a different story)"

Why would anyone be doing fellowship if their heart wasn't in it? Can I just say that no one should do a fellowship if they don't actually like/enjoy the field. That's a recipe for the buyer's remorse we end up seeing when people want to leave fellowship and come here to ask if it's OK.

Maybe I read it too literally, but I interpreted the OP as meaning cardiac-related specialties were probably not going to be in the running for "not useful." However, on re-reading the original post, that's a rather unusual qualifying statement, so it would probably help if OP clarified what they meant.

 

[Raryn]

Plenty of fellowships aren't *financially* useful, particularly when you take into consideration opportunity cost of lost earnings.

Endocrine isn't for example. But it's definitely useful for the patients - and I enjoy my work more than if I had just stayed an internist.

 

[mvenus929]

Plenty of fellowships aren't *financially* useful, particularly when you take into consideration opportunity cost of lost earnings.

Endocrine isn't for example. But it's definitely useful for the patients - and I enjoy my work more than if I had just stayed an internist.

Same, except swap internist for 'general pediatrician'. Who makes more than I do. Yes, three years is excessive for my fellowship.

But I get to see a higher concentration of patients with rare (and interesting) diseases and can actually make a significant difference in their lives.

 

[jarafernando]

i have my brother in law a pediatric pulmonologist making 150k , on call every 3 days for CF center . he gets 8k bonus every 6 months ...thats it My freind who is a gen peds , makes 500k net income after over head .

 

[jarafernando]

yes, you need to follow your passion, but many of my freinds who followed their heart are now rethinking, especially, when they have to situation where , they dont have enough . Many of them tell me that they made bad choice in choosing peds pulm or peds heme . they said if they chose 1 yr sleep or sports medicine they would have had a better life. the Loss of income spills to family life too. This is what i see.

 

[GoSpursGo]

yes, you need to follow your passion, but many of my freinds who followed their heart are now rethinking, especially, when they have to situation where , they dont have enough . Many of them tell me that they made bad choice in choosing peds pulm or peds heme . they said if they chose 1 yr sleep or sports medicine they would have had a better life. the Loss of income spills to family life too. This is what i see.

... OK? If your definition is that useful=increased earning capacity, then sure most non-EM/NICU(/Cards?/GI?) peds fellowships are "useless." But you can easily circumvent this as a subspecialist by going into pharma.

Where is your gen peds friend located? Because I bet he's not making $500k in a major metro area. Again, we all make personal choices that we think will make us happy.

 

[thetubes]

yes , job market for Peds Subspecialties like pulmonology and Hematology are very tight .
Becuase general pediatricians manage asthma and chronic lung disease better than pulmonologist

I would argue that many general pediatricians either misdiagnose something as asthma or completely miss the diagnosis...hard to do a head to head comparison in this situation. The job market for peds pulmonology is definitely not very tight but it probably is for peds heme onc. It's one thing to come here to post an outlandish claim that pediatric sub-specialization in general is pointless but then to go further and attack those fields and those that enter into them? What's your motivation here?

 

[mvenus929]

yes, you need to follow your passion, but many of my freinds who followed their heart are now rethinking, especially, when they have to situation where , they dont have enough . Many of them tell me that they made bad choice in choosing peds pulm or peds heme . they said if they chose 1 yr sleep or sports medicine they would have had a better life. the Loss of income spills to family life too. This is what i see.

There's something to be said for perspective. I will never compete financially with a surgeon. But I'm making more as a single person than my family did growing up, and am living very comfortably. But I also choose to live in the midwest over, say, NYC, because living in a big coastal city is not important to me, and made the choice to work for a non-profit hospital to get loan forgiveness (though I could pay off my loans in a reasonable time frame as well).

People who don't have 'enough' on any physician's salary have made choices that may not have been the best financial choices--whether this was related to the school they attended (debt load), where they chose to live (NYC, California, etc), sending kids to private school, living in a large house, etc. For them, perhaps choosing a different profession would have been a better financial choice. Me? I'm perfectly content with my 6 clinics per week compared to the angst and stress over being a general pediatrician or the lack of cognitive interest from sleep or sports medicine, despite the cut in income.

 

[sloop]

In psychiatry, I would say that the only psychiatry-specific fellowships that can reliably increase your earning potential are Child & Adolescent and Forensic Psychiatry. Addiction Psychiatry might in limited circumstances if you’re going to become the medical director of some sort of very fancy substance abuse treatment center or something, but I think that it generally does not improve your earning potential. Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry and Geriatric Psychiatry don’t generally qualify you for jobs that you wouldn’t get as a general psychiatrist, except if you want to work in an academic institution where you’ll probably earn less than you would in a non-academic setting. The other psychiatry specialties are not ABPN specialties and also don’t really increase your earning potential.

The reason people do fellowships in things like C-L and Geri, however, is that they like working in those settings or with that population and would like to get a job where they spend the most time possible in that type of work. That’s generally going to be in a major metropolitan hospital with enough specialization that you can spend the vast majority of your time or even all of your time only doing your subspecialty. The downside is that these places also ironically tend to pay worse than other, less academically focused, less specialized, or less prestigious hospitals.