Med-Neuro programs

[cnnisl]

hey everyone--wanted to know what you think of combined med-neuro programs--what are the advantages/disadvantages and how would it benefit someone?thanks!

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[kasimagore1]

There are two advantages I can come up with: one, if you want to work in an NICU setting where neurologists are actually the ones running the unit (as opposed to serving as neuro consultants to MICU team), a more solid foundation of medicine will certainly be much more useful. 2. if, instead of seeing patient as referred from PCPs, you want to work as a primary care internist with an emphasis on neuro diseases that's more common in a routine outpatient setting (HA, tremor, dementia, etc), then a combined residency may be useful. The counterpoints to the advantages as suggested above are 1) Neuro-critical care fellowship is always available after residency, and you don't need to commit x years of training in medicine, if, for any reason, you decide in patient unit is not your thing. 2) unless you have already established a reputation in treating neuro patients, and has a large patient base, why would patients in your potential service area want to see you instead of a neurologist, especially their CC is more complicated than just a chronic HA? There are only a handful of combined programs in the nation (eg. Tulane), and many are closing due to lack of interest. So, why do you want to pursue a med/neuro residency?

 

[GopherBrain]

A combined med/neuro program might be useful if you wanted to practice neuro with a primary care focus. Some of the best neurologists I know are double boarded. However, I really don't think it is that useful for fellowship applications, academic positions, etc.

If you want to practice as a typical neurologist or a subspecialty, I think that doing a double program just adds more time to the process, without much return.