Preliminary Med for anesthesia

[schauhan]

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When you do decide to apply for residency in anesthesia, do you apply to preliminary med in the same program too, or do you only apply to preliminary med and apply for anesthesia the next year. What is the difference between categorical and advanced training?

 

[veetz]

When you do decide to apply for residency in anesthesia, do you apply to preliminary med in the same program too, or do you only apply to preliminary med and apply for anesthesia the next year. What is the difference between categorical and advanced training?

Actual anesthesiology residency training is 3 yrs, but requires 1 yr of internship which can be a preliminary medicine, surgery, or transitional year. A year of FP, pediatrics, OB/GYN counts as well. Some anesthesia programs combine the intern year into their residency, calling it a CBY (clinical base yr). Programs that offer such a cirrculum are referred to as Categorical programs (4yr), where as programs that only offer CA1-CA3 are known as advanced programs (3yr).

A program Chair said that all anesthesia programs must go to the 4yr route by 2007, so after this year there may not be a need to apply separately for an intern year when applying for anesthesia. This is the only time I've heard this, so who knows. But if it remains like it is now, you only need to apply for an intern year if there's a chance that you'll end up at a 3 yr program.