Internship vs. Residency

[NCF145]

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I have been reading a few medical books lately and have noticed that the doctors are doing their internships and residencies at different hospitals. How does that work?

 

[Non-TradTulsa]

I have been reading a few medical books lately and have noticed that the doctors are doing their internships and residencies at different hospitals. How does that work?

Nearly everybody has to do an internship in medicine. If you're planning on moving on to something else after your internship year (surgery, rads, OB, etc), you apply for a "preliminary" position - which means you're not promised a spot after PGY-1 year and they don't expect to see you back (you can apply to stay if you change your mind). Once your internship is done in a "preliminary" position, you may well move on to a different program at a different hospital for PGY-2 and beyond. If you want to do your residency in Internal Medicine or a subspecialty, you apply for a "categorical" position - which means you're going to stay there for three years.

 

[OSUdoc08]

Nearly everybody has to do an internship in medicine. If you're planning on moving on to something else after your internship year (surgery, rads, OB, etc), you apply for a "preliminary" position - which means you're not promised a spot after PGY-1 year and they don't expect to see you back (you can apply to stay if you change your mind). Once your internship is done in a "preliminary" position, you may well move on to a different program at a different hospital for PGY-2 and beyond. If you want to do your residency in Internal Medicine or a subspecialty, you apply for a "categorical" position - which means you're going to stay there for three years.

This is a false statement. This is very rare. Just about all residencies start at the PGY-1 year, and this year is not considered an internship year. There is no applying for new spots after the first year either, it is all combined.

Internship is an outdated term for the first year of residency, and most commonly used with DO residencies.

 

[airflare]

I think I read somewhere that an internship (one year of post-graduate training) is all that is required to become a general practitioner (aside from passing boards and obtaining a license, of course). And that this is why the first year of a residency has this unique name.

 

[Rafa]

I think you'd get more accurate answers in the allopathic forum.

 

[OSUdoc08]

I think I read somewhere that an internship (one year of post-graduate training) is all that is required to become a general practitioner (aside from passing boards and obtaining a license, of course). And that this is why the first year of a residency has this unique name.

This is old information, which is no longer applicable in the modern world.

You must complete a minimum of 3 years of residency in order to become a board certified physician. The "general practitioner" is no longer a valid route to becoming a practicing physician.

 

[njbmd]

Hi there,
A PGY-1 year is actually the same as the old internship. The old "rotating internship" has been replaced by a "transitional PGY-1" year.

If you are going into General Surgery or one of the general surgery specialties, you do a categorical PGY-1 year in surgery. You generally start in the same place that you finish your PGY-5 year.

If you are interested in Ortho, Neuro, ENT and Uro, you would do a designated preliminary PGY-1 year in general surgery. If you are going into rads or anesthesia, you may do your designated preliminary PGY-1 year in surgery, medicine or a transitional year.

If you were not able to match into a categorical general surgery slot, you would do a non-designated PGY-1 year in surgery and go back into the MATCH the next year or accept a position outside the MATCH.

Medicine works pretty much the same way. There are categorical PGY-1 internal medicine years and preliminary internal medicine PGY-1 years for folks going into path, rads, anesthesia, derm or optho.

Either way, PGY-1 is an internship be it transitional, categorical, designated or non-designated. We refer to the PGY-1s as "interns" or "juniors".

njbmd 🙂

 

[newbie1kenobi]

For the surgical specialties such as ortho, you can go straight to a 5-year Ortho residency instead of doing 1 year gen surgery followed by 4 years of ortho, is this right?

 

[OSUdoc08]

For the surgical specialties such as ortho, you can go straight to a 5-year Ortho residency instead of doing 1 year gen surgery followed by 4 years of ortho, is this right?

Correct.

 

[Captain Fantastic]

For the surgical specialties such as ortho, you can go straight to a 5-year Ortho residency instead of doing 1 year gen surgery followed by 4 years of ortho, is this right?

That is known as an "integrated" residency -- some programs integrate the prelim year into their curriculum.