Second Residency

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I am currently rounding up a first residency in psychiatry and interested in doing a complete neurology residency to get that comprehensive neuroscience/behavioral medicine experience. Any thoughts on potential problems or pitfalls getting a neurology spot?

 

[f_w]

Any thoughts on potential problems or pitfalls getting a neurology spot?

1. Money.

After you completed your 'initial residency period', the funding the hospital receives for you for further residency training will be cut by about $20.000 per year (this is variable by hospital and state. typically hospitals receive between 80k and 150k per resident FTE/year.)

This brochure from the AAMC explains the funding process:

https://services.aamc.org/Publicati...version57.pdf&prd_id=153&prv_id=180&pdf_id=57

So, when you go out interviewing for neuro residencies, this might be an issue to address. There are some misconceptions out there that you don't get any funding at all (or that it is cut by 50%). In the mix of things, the financial implications for the institution are not that great and there are plenty of people who have done second residencies, even after the 1997 deficit reduction act.

2. IM time
Another issue to be aware of is that you need 6 months of internal medicine training before you can start a neuro residency. So if you where one of the people who did psych without an internship (don't know when that change came), you might want to look for a couple of months of IM experience so you are ready for neuro.
Go to the neuro board and the ACGME RRC websites to look up the requirements. They might cut you some slack if you are already a psychiatrist.