Medical Oncology

[sleep deprived]

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I often see posts addressing how competative certain residencies are. From what I have gathered, derm, optho, ortho, and rads are some of the most competative residences out there, while FP and int.med are not very competative at all. Where does medical Oncology fall in this scheme? Competative, or not? I would appreciate anyone's input. Thanks.

 

[AJM]

Oncology is a fellowship you do after an Internal Medicine residency, it's not a residency in itself. Compared with other fellowships that are done after IM, it's probably in the middle tier of competitiveness.

 

[sleep deprived]

Thanks for the reply. One more question. Can you do family practice instead of IM, then the fellowship in medical Oncology? Or does it have to be internal medicine?

 

[Brewster]

You can do adult hematology/oncology out of internal medicine or pediatric hematology/oncology out of pediatrics.

There are few fellowships out of family practice. Sports medicine is the only one I am aware of (is there an adolescent health one as well?).

 

[AJM]

Like Brewster said, oncology fellowship is not available out of Family med residency. There really aren't many subspecialties available out of FP, which is one of the reasons why many people do IM or Peds residencies instead. FP is a "true" primary care field, in that the only fellowships that are done after FP are related to primary care in some way -- sports medicine is one, and geriatrics is another available fellowship. BTW, sports medicine can also be done from peds and IM, and geriatrics can also be done from IM. I'm not sure about adolescent medicine -- I know you can do it from Peds, but I don't know about FP.

Long story short, if you want to do a subspecialty in the oncology area, you will need to either do IM or Peds first (or a Rad Onc residency, or general surgery for surg onc).

 

[sleep deprived]

Thanks guys. I appreciate it. 🙂