I am looking at scrambling for a neurology position since I did not match in neurosurgery and was wondering what advice anyone had?
It appears there as been a few openings in 2005 and 2006. I am currently reworking my personal statement. Do I need to get letters of rec as well?
If the program I get into does not include a prelim year how hard will this be to obtain an intern spot?
I am specifically interested in going on to do a fellowship as an intensivist. Does anyone know how competitive that is?
Firstly, let me say that there have been plenty of individuals originally interested in Neurosurgery (like myself), that decided late in the game to switch to Neurology for various reasons. I have even known one other gentleman such as yourself who didn't match into Neurosurgery and scrambled into Neurology - where he is happily working to this day as a PGY-2. I am personally very happy with my choice of Neurology over Neurosurgery, and would make the same choice again in a heartbeat. But to each his own.
Deciding post-SF match presents its own unique questions. For instance, are you
really sure that you wish to pursue a career in Neurology? If Neurosurgery is the only specialty that you can see yourself doing, then you might want to reconsider a preliminary General Surgery position and attempting to match again next year. What about a year of Neurosurgery research and then re-attempting to match? I knew of a candidate for Neurosurgery who did just this and actually scrambled into a Neurosurgical spot after failing to match twice. He is an absolutely fantastic Neurosurgical resident right now...completing his PGY-4 year.
You might also consider additional surgical pathways...like General Surgery and then a fellowship. The reason that I throw this information out there is Neurology and Neurosurgery tend to be different in many respects, and most medical students tend to be either "surgical" or "medical." You might save yourself some grief by being honest with what you really want.
Now. If you continue to think strongly about this subject and are indeed interested in formally completing a career in Neurology, then you do have some procedurally-oriented options. A Critical Care fellowship would be between 1 and 2 years. They are fairly readily obtainable. This information is per IM Chief Residents at my own preliminary IM program (one of whom is going into Pulmonary/Critical Care).
There are specific threads in this forum related to Neurocritical care and other fellowships that might interest you. You might also try an article titled "Therapeutic Advances in Interventional Neurology" by Kirmani
et al from the Journal of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics.
Just be cognizant of what your choices will ultimately entail, and be very clear with yourself about what you really want out of your career. The only person who can decide that is yourself.
Best wishes.
