Leaving IM for Rads after completing a residency

[rs2006]

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Hi everyone,

I hope all is well. I am currently a third year IM at a "highly-ranked" institution and will be finishing my residency at the end of the month. While excited about the completion of my residency, I find myself confused regarding my future career plans. I enjoy the cerebral and academic aspect of internal medicine and am realizing that I really do not enjoy clinical medicine-- the day to day endless paperwork, phone calls, families and family meetings, difficul familes. Anyway, I was a solid student in medical school and am a US grad and my scores were decent-- step 1 score was ~220, step 2 ck ~low 230s, passed cs on first attempt and got 240 on step 3. I passed all exams on first attempt. R

egardless, I have been considering a career change to radiology, but wanted to get some input from anyone who has done this before as this would be a major decision. In fact, I am considering applying for radiology in the upcoming match this year. I do not have any publications/research and would like to hear from anyone in this forum who switched from another specialty into radiology and ideallly would like to hear from someone else who did this after completing at IM residency. I know this is not impossible as I have heard of people who make career changes later in life. I would be grateful if anyone in the forum could provide any advice regarding how one could go about persuing this. Any thoughts would be welcome. Thanks in advance.

 

[Taurus]

I met many former IM and surg residents and attendings who later switched into rads. It's quite common. You would get advanced standing and start as PGY2 in radiology (first year rads). So I think you would need to get a position outside of match. Check out these sites:

http://www.auntminnie.com
http://www.apdr.org/residents/employment_seeking.cfm

 

[gonogo]

On the interview trail I met several residents who first did either surgery or IM before going into radiology. So it's definitely not uncommon. Just out of curiosity, have you considered going into a fellowship with considerable exposure to imaging? Let's say, going into cardiology and then do cardiac imaging.

 

[gluon999]

How common is it for IMs to go into Rads? Looks like pretty common if you were to believe these forums. Are most IM people really that unhappy with the field? I ask as an MS4.

Doesn't life get better as an attending?

Gonogo brought up a good point about cards. You could probably match into a cards fellowship if you are at "highly ranked" place. Then you could focus on imaging and get level III certified to become the boss of your own imaging center.