Med Tox Fellowship

[GonnaBeADoc2222]

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A few general questions:

1) Are there any Tox fellowships that are just 1 year and not 2

2) How easy is it to continue to work EM shifts on the side during fellowship?

3) How receptive are fellowships to people who have been EM attendings for some time and now want to expand their horizons?

 

[deleted497653]

1. I think they are all two years.

2. I had asked the same question to an ultrasound fellow- working during fellowship and they said it’s not really possible because you have other obligations like certain number of shifts needed or logging scans etc. on your days off. Maybe moonlight or get a prn job?

 

[DeadCactus]

1. No, toxicology is a 2 year ACGME fellowship.

2. Many people moonlight. Some more aggressively than others. As an observational estimate, fellows seem to work 4-6 shifts a month with an income generally on the lower end of the $100-200k range. You won't moonlight enough to make-up the half a million dollars you're giving up to do a two year fellowship. My personal opinion is that you're better off getting the most out of the fellowship than moonlighting too much in a futile effort to make-up the difference.

3. Response will be variable, some will like the experience and some will worry about your ability to tolerate another 2 years as a trainee after tasting the attending life.

 

[DeadCactus]

can anyone comment on what types of jobs exist as an EM trained toxicologist? I have never personally met a toxicologist before but the field seems so interesting

It's pretty variable. The most straightforward route is academic emergency medicine doing some toxicology teaching and maybe doing some bedside consults or taking call for a poison center. Other models include running an inpatient toxicology unit, getting involved with addiction medicine, consulting in environmental or occupational health, etc.

The good news is that it's a broad field with a lot of potential directions to take it in. The downside is that it's not like cardiology or ICU where you just show up and hang up your hat and have people send you patients. It takes some work to get a toxicology gig going enough to be self-sufficient (and even then it usually pas less on an hourly basis than EM) and many fellowship trained people seem to end up deciding they would rather mostly stick with EM which is more straightforward and lucrative.