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Is there such a thing as a part-time residency? Just curious.
Part time residency
- Thread starter SeekerOfTheTree
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Think there are some older threads on here discussing shared positions.
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Theoretically, yes. Practically, not really.
I have only known a few people who did this in IM and in both cases, were married couples who split a single position. It also doubles your time in residency, and while you may only be doing 6 months of rotations in a year, when you're on a rotation, that is as full time for you as it is for any of your co-residents.
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I've heard of such cases through second-hand accounts (probably here on SDN) and have always wondered how they were arranged. I don't mean from the standpoint of work hours or rotations--I'm more curious about how that spot was made in the first place for those people. Was it just connections leading to a spot outside of the match?
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No. If you look hard enough, you will find programs that state that they support part-time/shared positions. They are within the match. But you really need to do your homework to find a supportive program, and you need to be someone they want despite how much trouble you're making for them.
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As far as I know, the match doesn't support shared positions per se. Does this then become a subset of couples matching, where both applicants need to have duplicated rank lists? This seems to require significant trust on the program's side, otherwise they just opened up an extra match spot that they can't really support financially unless the couple matches there and splits the seat.
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You are correct that the match doesn't address shared positions. For a couple, what could be done is to match only one of them, with the understanding that they would be sharing the position. The other person would purposely not match at all - which can be done in the couples match. Or the program could match each of them, and know that they are going to be short an FTE which they can fill post SOAP.
These types of positions are complicated. The two people are sharing everything -- the same continuity clinic, all rotations, etc. If they are actually a couple, then the benefit issues are less of a concern -- i.e. they would both be getting healthcare coverage regardless of whether they are sharing a spot. It's a long haul since it's twice as long -- and the couple can't just decide to both have full time spots sometime in the future unless the program has room for that.
These types of positions are complicated. The two people are sharing everything -- the same continuity clinic, all rotations, etc. If they are actually a couple, then the benefit issues are less of a concern -- i.e. they would both be getting healthcare coverage regardless of whether they are sharing a spot. It's a long haul since it's twice as long -- and the couple can't just decide to both have full time spots sometime in the future unless the program has room for that.
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I had two classmates share an IM spot while both of their husbands did surgical residencies at the same institution and they were also each other's childcare. I think all four being at the same institution made the benefits part work out. They were committed to being in the city for longer based on spouse residencies anyways so it worked out well for them. But I don't know the details of the match lists and how that worked. I do know that they went to the program director together to propose this rather than just asking for a part time position and it happened to work out that two of them were interested.
