Is "Preliminary" a bad thing?

[Edward]

I was looking at a match list from a certain school, and I saw alot of matches in "preliminary" medicine and surgery. How is that different from regular surgery and internal medicine? Is a preliminary residency for someone who has trouble matching into a regular program? If not, why would someone go into preliminary surgery instead of surgery?

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[Becket]

Some fields require that you do a prelim year of surgery or medicine before starting your residency in that specialty. These specialties include (but aren't limited to) rads, neurology, derm for medicine and ENT, neurosurgery, urology and a few others for surgery.

 

[nyskindr]

Yes as stated many fields do require this preliminary year.Some preliminary medicine positions are very competitive. In general preliminary surgery years are easy to obtain and frequently do not fill up even in the most prestigious programs,as people going into Derm,Rads,Opthalmology generally choose to do amedicine preliminary... easier hours,less stress.

 

[Edward]

That's interesting because I did see people who matched directly into rads and derm, albeit a pretty small number. Is it possible to match directly into rads or some other competitive specialty without doing a preliminary year? Does it depend on the particular program, or the entire specialty?

 

[Whisker Barrel Cortex]

All radiology and anesthesia residencies require that you have a year of graduate training prior to starting the specialty. However, there are a minority of programs (5 out of the 20 I interviewed at) that offer a combined program. This means you match at a program, and it includes a prelim year at the same hospital. Most programs, as stated above, you have to apply separately to transitional years or prelim spots.

 

[arthur v]

What you're seeing is people who match into dermatology and radiology programs which have a built-in preliminary medicine year. Take the Mayo Clinic, for example. They offer 2 types of dermatology positions: categorical, which means you have to do a preliminary year of medicine at the Mayo Clinic followed by 3 years of dermatology there; or advanced, which means you can do a preliminary year of medicine, surgery, pediatrics, transitional, family practice, OB/GYN, or emergency medicine at any hospital you choose before your 3 years of dermatology at Mayo. The hassle is that you have to apply and interview for both prelim and advanced programs.

Radiology was actually a 4 year residency (without an prelim year) not too long ago, until rads programs decided to make a year of broad-based medical training mandatory.

AV

 

[jargon124]

I have seen some match lists with a few "preliminary medicine/surgery" matches listed and no indication of how future PGYs will be spent (i.e. no mention of derm, rads, opth, neuro, etc.). In these cases, you could view them as negative since you can infer that those peeps did not match into a PGY-2 slot for whatever specialty they were applying for.

 

[nyskindr]

Some schools will only list the pgy2 match such as Derm or Rads and will not even post the pgy1 year so that may cause confusion when reading the list.All Derm programs require a year of Peds or Med/surg as a prelim year either built in (few programs) or independent.I dont think you can make judgement by seeing someone with only a prelim year and no pgy2 listed as to exactly what happened.It may well be that they didnt match into their chosen specialty and ended up that way.But there are people who plan on signing out of the match in path,psych and its not listed.