Originally posted by Surfer75
Heme/Onc is 3, Med onc 2.
You know, I've been seeing this distinction made with increasing frequency and am unsure how it all started. The Onc portion of a Hem/Onc fellowship is no different from a "Med Onc" fellowship. The ABIM has two board certification exams in this area: One for Hematology (covering both benign and malignant heme) and one for Oncology (covering both solid and hematological malignancies). There is actually considerable overlap (leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma, HSCT) between the two exams.
Completing 2 years of a Heme fellowship makes you eligible for Heme boards. Completing 2 years of Oncology fellowship makes you eligible for Onc boards. Completing a 3-year Hem/Onc fellowship makes you eligible to sit for both. The vast majority of programs out there expect you to do all 3 years. There are separate professional organizations for Heme (ASH) and Onc (ASCO), though people who focus on hematalogical malignancies will often attend both meetings.
This term "Med Onc" is a fairly recent creation. Paired with the rise of Rad Onc and the attitudes of many Surg Onc folks, the feeling arose that calling your chemo doc your "oncologist" left the others in a weird position. So the term "Med Onc" began to be circulated to refer to those oncologists who got there via the Internal Medicine route. Now we have Rad Onc, Med Onc, and Surg Onc folks, often working together as interdisciplinary teams at many institutions.
Anyway, a long response to say that "Med Onc" and oncologists who went through a complete Hem/Onc fellowship is a distinction without a difference....
