OB/GYN fellowship after IM residency???

[music89]

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I've heard that after Family Medicine residencies you can apply for an OB/GYN fellowship to get further/more extensive training in women's health (ex: training in preforming C-sections). But what about an OB/GYN fellowship after an IM residency??? I would like to match into an IM residency, but I feel like I will miss out on basic OB/GYN skills like knowing how to deliver a baby.

(I know some people may say that I should just apply to a Family Medicine program, but I really like the critical care/inpatient aspect of IM, which is why I prefer it more than Family Medicine and would rather match IM).

THANKS! =)

 

[DrMidlife]

You don't get enough OB or Gyn in IM to move on to the advanced (or "advanced") training in a fellowship. You'll deliver a few babies on the IM intern year OB month, but not enough for anybody to ever let you do it on your own.

The year of OB fellowship that FM docs do is based on already having done 3 years, including 3-6 months of inpatient OB, a minimum number of OB & Gyn procedures (west coast FM residents frequently do 100+ vaginal births and 40+ c-sections), usually some level III NICU, and OB continuity care. All of which the ObGyns here are going to laugh at if I try to say it's adequate preparation for OB practice, but you can find FM+OB docs doing prenatal care & taking ~Q4 L&D call all over the US.

The Gyn training in and after FM is family planning and pap&pelvic. Gyn in this ObGyn forum means hysterectomies and laparoscopies and tape and robots etc. As in: real no kidding around surgery.

My suggestion is to identify people doing a job you want. There are IM docs who run women's health clinics, for instance. If you hear of an IM doc who delivers babies, that would be a zebra. Go meet that zebra.

You should also get more info on whether the medicine & CC training in FM would meet your needs. FM includes months and months of inpatient med & ICU. Some programs have heavy inpatient med, some have heavy trauma/CC, some have heavy obstetrics. Alaska FMR has heavy everything - maybe use their curriculum as a yardstick.

Fundamentally you won't be delivering babies if you can't get somebody to pay you and insure you to deliver babies, and that comes down to board certification and procedure counts.

Best of luck to you.

 

[trypanosomiasis]

Good advice above. From IM, some places do "Obstetric Medicine" fellowships (Brown comes to mind) where you do IM in an obstetric setting, but you're not actually doing OB things like deliveries. I don't think I've met medicine docs who have delivered babies, outside of emergencies on planes or something.

From what you're saying, OP, I might consider reevaluating your choice of IM to look at an obstetrics/critical care-heavy FM program, or do OB and maybe think about MFM. OB anesthesia is also another one that is a good choice for critical care subjects. EM also gets you some basic OB experience.


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[music89]

thank you for your responses!! I'll definitely take all of this into consideration!