Going into pain medicine from neurology

[guamegi]

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I am starting my neurology residency this year and I will be going to SoCal to do so.

It seems that my own program doesn't have pain fellowship (though it seems that I have an option to do away for pain med at other programs with pain fellowship that are affiliated with my own) and it seems that going into pain medicine as a neurologist is an uphill battle.

Any advice on preparing for going into pain med?​

 

[sg2506]

OP,
I was in the same boat as you. I did my Neurology residency in a mid-tier program, I started to get involved in pain projects and tried to get a pain angle with neurology research ( Like pain in MS patients, etc). Try to do some/all of your electives in Pain and go to meetings (especially NANS) to make some connections.
Also, most pain research comes out of the private practice world, so contact private practice guys in SoCal who's conducting research and get involved.
It will be a little bit of an uphill battle but totally worth it.

 

[Dr. Morpheus]

Worth doing some away rotations at fellowship you are interested. If your board scores aren't high but you kill it on the rotation (and have research like sg2506 mentions, then it improves your chance.