Internal Medicine to Emergency Medicine

[portland]

I am presently a second year resident in internal medicine. I did not have any exposure to ER while in medical school so did not initially consider it as a speciality. I did an ER rotation this year and found I enjoyed it a lot more than most of my internal medicine rotations. I am considering switching to ER after I finish my internal medicine residency. Two questions:

1. I have seen combined IM/ER programs that require 2.5 years of ER to be board eligible in ER. If I were to do an ER residency after finishing an internal medicine residency can I expect to get 6 months of credit towards ER board certification for my IM training?

2. Would it be difficult to find a ER spot after IM given the federal funding restrictions on multiple residencies?

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[The White Coat Investor]

Yes and yes. Good luck. Consider hospitals with lots of funding that take "unfunded" candidates. I think the SAEM website lists which those are.

 

[Sheerstress]

Would it be difficult to find a ER spot after IM given the federal funding restrictions on multiple residencies?

Yes, but keep in mind that whereas some programs use this to screen out applicants, others do not place as much emphasis on it, or perhaps don't even have a clue.

I couldn't tell you specifically which programs fall into the latter category, but consider the 2,3,4 programs, as they eat a year of funding anyway. Good luck.