Med-Derm

[dermie1985]

I'm interested in complex medical dermatology (inpatient consult, autoimmune-rheum/derm, immunosuppressed patients, melanoma, CTCL, etc.). I really don't see myself ever in private practice dermatology or working outside the academic environment. It's not my personality. I love internal medicine but want a derm focus to my career. Looking at med-derm programs, they actually seem very enticing with the balance of what I want to be capable of managing in my career and the variety of training sounds awesome.

I've been toying with the idea of applying to the Med-Derm programs (I think there are only 7 or 8). I'm applying dermatology (no categorical internal med programs other than med-derm). My question is (1) do regular derm programs sort of black-ball you on their rank list if they see you also applied to their same-institution med-derm program (2) are these separate interviews? or altogether on the same day? (3) do you need to re-do your personal statement for these programs or is OK to just submit your derm statement (maybe with an added line or paragraph about why med-derm?) .

I realize there have been other threads on this in the past. And I realize there are varying opinions about the utility of med-derm. I think I can work out my own opinion on this after the interview trail is finished, so no need to comment on that. However, I don't want to hurt my chances at a normal dermatology residency by applying to the Med-Derm programs. Thoughts?

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[asmallchild]

I'm interested in complex medical dermatology (inpatient consult, autoimmune-rheum/derm, immunosuppressed patients, melanoma, CTCL, etc.). I really don't see myself ever in private practice dermatology or working outside the academic environment. It's not my personality. I love internal medicine but want a derm focus to my career. Looking at med-derm programs, they actually seem very enticing with the balance of what I want to be capable of managing in my career and the variety of training sounds awesome.

I've been toying with the idea of applying to the Med-Derm programs (I think there are only 7 or 8). I'm applying dermatology (no categorical internal med programs other than med-derm). My question is (1) do regular derm programs sort of black-ball you on their rank list if they see you also applied to their same-institution med-derm program (2) are these separate interviews? or altogether on the same day? (3) do you need to re-do your personal statement for these programs or is OK to just submit your derm statement (maybe with an added line or paragraph about why med-derm?) .

I realize there have been other threads on this in the past. And I realize there are varying opinions about the utility of med-derm. I think I can work out my own opinion on this after the interview trail is finished, so no need to comment on that. However, I don't want to hurt my chances at a normal dermatology residency by applying to the Med-Derm programs. Thoughts?

1) No they won't blackball you
2) Hopefully someone else can answer this. I don't know enough about the programs to give you an answer on this
3) Yes, you should have a very good answer as to why you are interested in a combined-training pathway. An added paragraph would be a good idea

 

[Dral]

In my experience, you interview one day for Derm and another day for IM. Each day is the full interview day experience.

 

[mdeast]

1) No they won't blackball you
2) Hopefully someone else can answer this. I don't know enough about the programs to give you an answer on this
3) Yes, you should have a very good answer as to why you are interested in a combined-training pathway. An added paragraph would be a good idea

I'm thinking about Med-Derm also. For #2, are the interview processes completely separate? In other words, is there a separate Med-Derm interview, committee and rank process that is separate from just applying in dermatology. Or, do you just tell the program at the end whether or not you're going to rank Derm or Med-Derm?

 

[Dral]

For med Derm, you have to be 'favored' by both the med and Derm departments. I'm not sure how they communicate with one another to determine that.

For Northwestern, you can rank both Derm and med-Derm. For WHC, you choose to rank one or the other and let the PD know.

 

[exeunt]

any chance that med-derm counts as the same specialty as derm under eras... for payment purposes? haha

 

[DermViser]

For med Derm, you have to be 'favored' by both the med and Derm departments. I'm not sure how they communicate with one another to determine that.

For Northwestern, you can rank both Derm and med-Derm. For WHC, you choose to rank one or the other and let the PD know.

That's kind of dumb when people are applying to both and willing to do either to match into Derm.

 

[klake3]

I have seen one year dermatology "fellowships". Usually research based it seems, and taken by people who completed an IM program. Not sure what the point of these is, other than to fulfill a research interest?

 

[DermViser]

I have seen one year dermatology "fellowships". Usually research based it seems, and taken by people who completed an IM program. Not sure what the point of these is, other than to fulfill a research interest?

No, they are research-only fellowships, and it isn't just people who finished IM who do them.

 

[Anonymous007]

I am open minded to the idea of med-derm, but still haven't totally grasped the utility of it. Apart from the desire to have the freedom to practice either medicine or dermatology separately, does being med-derm trained enable you to manage certain diseases more completely than you otherwise would if you were only dermatology trained? For example, if you diagnose a patient with sarcoidosis and they have lung involvement, even mild disease let's say, will someone who is med-derm trained not consult pulmonology? Otherwise, in the absence of managing extracutaneous manifestations of disease, I am not sure what someone who is med-derm trained would offer a complex medical dermatology patient compared to someone who is only dermatology trained and devoted their practice to complex medical dermatology patients.

One interesting perspective I've heard from someone very smart is that there may be an economic advantage to having a hospitalist on staff Who is capable of managing or triaging dermatology cases the present in an inpatient or emergency department setting.

Any med-derms out there who can share some insight? It's also a pretty new specialty and perhaps still finding its niche.

 

[DermViser]

I am open minded to the idea of med-derm, but still haven't totally grasped the utility of it. Apart from the desire to have the freedom to practice either medicine or dermatology separately, does being med-derm trained enable you to manage certain diseases more completely than you otherwise would if you were only dermatology trained? For example, if you diagnose a patient with sarcoidosis and they have lung involvement, even mild disease let's say, will someone who is med-derm trained not consult pulmonology? Otherwise, in the absence of managing extracutaneous manifestations of disease, I am not sure what someone who is med-derm trained would offer a complex medical dermatology patient compared to someone who is only dermatology trained and devoted their practice to complex medical dermatology patients.

One interesting perspective I've heard from someone very smart is that there may be an economic advantage to having a hospitalist on staff Who is capable of managing or triaging dermatology cases the present in an inpatient or emergency department setting.

Any med-derms out there who can share some insight? It's also a pretty new specialty and perhaps still finding its niche.

In reality probably not. You have to realize a lot of these combos that came about were more an academic exercise - a lot of much older derms did IM first and then did Derm. Doing Med-Derm allows you to do both and not get docked by Medicare in funding by doing them separately. There is also a Peds-Derm residency as well, I believe at UCSF.