May be a stupid question...

[CBG23]

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but is it possible to specialize in two areas of medicine after med school? Does anyone do this?

 

[SB100]

I think so. One of the doctors who interviewed me at Tufts was a sleep specialist and pulmonologist, although I'm not sure if sleep specialists fall under a certain category.

 

[Ashers]

but is it possible to specialize in two areas of medicine after med school? Does anyone do this?

There are med-peds residencies, and I had a preceptor for a class who was med-neuro. You're probably not gonna find too many psych-urologists though.

 

[WiscDoc]

but is it possible to specialize in two areas of medicine after med school? Does anyone do this?

Unless the two are related, then you probably do NOT want to attempt such thing. It will mean two residencies, and as you know residents make much less for working much more.

If the two are related, like sleep medicine and pulmonology (I worked as a sleep tech and the pulmonologis who ran the lab had a fellowship in sleep medicine).

Another example I know of is kind of combining neoru and cardio by doing a fellowship in vascularneurology as a neurologist. (You actually get to do minimally invase procedures such as stents in the brain blood vessels...)

 

[Tiger26]

you can hold more than one board certification, like surgery and critical care medicine for example, but most of the time they are somewhat related.

 

[fakin' the funk]

but is it possible to specialize in two areas of medicine after med school? Does anyone do this?

To do this, you do have to do 2 separate residencies.

For example, if you wanted to be a IM doc and a radiologist, that's 6 years there. 3 for IM (PGY-1 + 2 of residency), then 3 of radiology.

I am conjecturing here, but for the peds specialties I think you pretty much have to do a peds residency and your specialty residency (e.g. peds anesthesiology).

 

[I am Hans]

To do this, you do have to do 2 separate residencies.

Not necessarily. As noted above, there are combined residencies and as a matter of fact, we have a forum for such here at SDN! Most common are Med-Peds, Neuro-Psych, EM-IM, etc.

For example, if you wanted to be a IM doc and a radiologist, that's 6 years there. 3 for IM (PGY-1 + 2 of residency), then 3 of radiology.

Not to be too pedantic, but a full Radiology residency is 5 years which does include a Prelim Med or Surg year. So if you wanted to do both IM and Rads it would 3 for IM and 4 for Rads (since you could count your first IM year as your Prelim year for Rads), for a total of 7.

I am conjecturing here, but for the peds specialties I think you pretty much have to do a peds residency and your specialty residency (e.g. peds anesthesiology).

Not necessarily. There are fellowships. In the example you gave above, you would do an Anesthesiology residency followed by a Peds Anesthesia Fellowship; the same holds for EM - there are EM Peds fellowships, etc. Now these people are not qualified to take the Peds Boards (which would require completing a full Peds residency) nor would be they be qualified to take care of Pediatric conditions outside the scope of their training...ie, you wouldn't see a Pediatric Anesthesiologist doing general peds or well baby checks. And most wouldn't want to.

You will see Surgeons who have done Critical Care fellowships, Pulmonologists who have done the same or Sleep Medicine training, Vascular Surgeons who do some Interventional Rads/Angio, etc.

In general, outside of the scope of the formal combined residencies, most people do not do two residencies in two disparate fields because it would be hard to find time to focus on the minutiae of each specialty and to do it well. Besides, who wants to do two residencies unless they really have a change of heart about what they want to do with their life and career?

 

[mjl1717]

No, its not a stupid q. Just do 2 residencies. (easy to say) Usually they are related. As L2D and other icons on this forum will tell you.-- William Osler himself did 2 residencies Pathology and Internal Medicine.

 

[GreenShirt]

As many have mentioned there are many dual-specialty residencies. However, if you want to purse two unrelated residency it can be a bit difficult b/c the government will only fund a certain amount of years in residency training, so programs are usually reluctant to fund additional training beyond a certain amount of years.

 

[dutchman]

but is it possible to specialize in two areas of medicine after med school? Does anyone do this?

Not a stupid question, but a stupid idea in many cases. Challenges you might face:

-RESIDENCY * 2, enough said.

-The hospital might have a problem getting funding from the government for your second GME.

-If you are married, you might get dumped.

-You have to re-certify if you intend to keep those board certifications. So now you are in an endless loop of test taking. It probably will seem like that even if you only had one, but now you have two, with a 4-5 year gap between them.

-If you owe student loans, your interest will keep accruing big time, and by the time you are done with this circus, it would have ballooned to a ridiculous amount of debt.