Is Salary during ACGME accredited fellowship secured?

[mahmed1983]

I’m a second year fellow and the PD sent me an indirect message that my research activities has to be funded to pay 50% of my salary.
I didn’t hear about this requirement and I don’t remember that any program mentioned that I have to have a fund to cover my salary during the fellowship.
My wife is a heme/onc fellow as well and her PD said he didn’t hear about this before. Also, my co-fellow told me the PD never talked to him about fund.
Do you have any advice on how to manage this situation? I asked the PD to send this an email stating that I have to find a fund but he ignored my email.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[whoknows2012]

I’m a second year fellow and the PD sent me an indirect message that my research activities has to be funded to pay 50% of my salary.
I didn’t hear about this requirement and I don’t remember that any program mentioned that I have to have a fund to cover my salary during the fellowship.
My wife is a heme/onc fellow as well and her PD said he didn’t hear about this before. Also, my co-fellow told me the PD never talked to him about fund.
Do you have any advice on how to manage this situation? I asked the PD to send this an email stating that I have to find a fund but he ignored my email.

Is this an academic program?? Well known?

Asking for grant writing as a requirement is reasonable; funding, not so much

 

[NotAProgDirector]

Not allowed. Institutional program requirements. Page 8:

To be fair, this is a bit vague. But I've always interpreted it as "not allowed to require moonlighting for salary", and would preclude these types of shenanigans.

Also, would need to be in your contract.

Sadly, you may have no choice anyway. They could simply decide to non-renew you for cause for not meeting their researhc requirements.

 

[gutonc]

I’m a second year fellow and the PD sent me an indirect message that my research activities has to be funded to pay 50% of my salary.
I didn’t hear about this requirement and I don’t remember that any program mentioned that I have to have a fund to cover my salary during the fellowship.
My wife is a heme/onc fellow as well and her PD said he didn’t hear about this before. Also, my co-fellow told me the PD never talked to him about fund.
Do you have any advice on how to manage this situation? I asked the PD to send this an email stating that I have to find a fund but he ignored my email.

Are you in a research pathway fellowship, or standard fellowship? If the latter, as @NotAProgDirector mentioned, this is not OK and needs to get run up the relevant chain of command (Dept of Medicine, DIO, etc).

If it's the former, they may require you to get funding to cover your research year(s) since your clinical contribution is virtually nil. My program had a couple of T32s that they'd help you craft a proposal to get funded for whatever you were planning to do anyway. If that didn't work out (which it always did), your PI had to cover your nut while you were in the lab.

 

[HemeOncHopeful19]

In addition to all of the above, what does your contract actually say?

I do think in my program (I did not care about research so never really got details on it) that if you wanted to spend basically 80+% of your time doing research in your third year that you were expected to get (and everyone was supported/had help getting) funding, otherwise you would end up doing a more clinically-oriented schedule. Could that be what they are talking about, for your third year?

 

[MD46]

At our program fellows could spend upto an extra year for research after being done with 3rd year to complete their project. They would moonlight as hospitalist or in the ED for extra cash but on their independent full license, no duty hours applied.

 

[NotAProgDirector]

Are you in a research pathway fellowship, or standard fellowship? If the latter, as @NotAProgDirector mentioned, this is not OK and needs to get run up the relevant chain of command (Dept of Medicine, DIO, etc).

If it's the former, they may require you to get funding to cover your research year(s) since your clinical contribution is virtually nil. My program had a couple of T32s that they'd help you craft a proposal to get funded for whatever you were planning to do anyway. If that didn't work out (which it always did), your PI had to cover your nut while you were in the lab.

As usual, @gutonc is right on the ball. If this is a research pathway, then the rules may be somewhat different although as mentioned they usually have a well worn path to obtain that funding. If your PI gets stuck with the bill, then they are stuck trying to fund you off of one of their grants.

In addition to all of the above, what does your contract actually say?

I do think in my program (I did not care about research so never really got details on it) that if you wanted to spend basically 80+% of your time doing research in your third year that you were expected to get (and everyone was supported/had help getting) funding, otherwise you would end up doing a more clinically-oriented schedule. Could that be what they are talking about, for your third year?

Another good point, agree completely. If the standard in your program is that fellows get research funding to pay for their advanced years (programs like this usually have a pure R3 research year) and you do not, then they can assign you as much clinical work in that year as they want. You can be in clinic / consults all day every day, and can be assigned as much weekend coverage as they please -- since you don't have research funding to balance it out.

At our program fellows could spend upto an extra year for research after being done with 3rd year to complete their project. They would moonlight as hospitalist or in the ED for extra cash but on their independent full license, no duty hours applied.

This is certainly true, but since it's an extra year the ACGME rules don't apply. Hence no duty hours, full license, etc.