Surgery prelim as USCE for IM residency

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CD15

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I am a FMG currently taking my steps. I am interested in IM residency and then Hem/Onc fellowship. I saw that several programs are asking for 1 year USCE for FMGs.

I found that many surgery prelim positions go unfilled whereas IM prelims are quite competitive. So I was wondering if I can do 1 year surgery prelim and with that USCE apply next year for IM residency?

Is there anything wrong with this plan? :)
How would IM PDs feel about a candidate doing surgery prelim applying for IM residency, when his whole CV is oriented towards IM?
Also would it be possible at all to land a prelim surg with an IM oriented profile?

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The answer is "maybe".

Yes, many programs would consider a successful year as a surgery prelim as 1 year of USCE. However, there are several problems with this approach:

1. You will use up one year of funding. That will leave you short of funding for your IM residency.
2. When applications go out (Sept), you'll have barely started. Most likely, your letters will say "CD15 just started as a surgery prelim and seems to be doing well". Plus, how exactly do you plan on going on interviews while you're a surgery prelim? So, you could plan on applying the next year, but that makes you one more year from your med school graduation which can be a problem.
3. As you mention, surgical prelims might not be so excited by someone interested in IM. Then again, they might not care at all.
 
Thank you for the reply.
Much appreciate it :)
 
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3. As you mention, surgical prelims might not be so excited by someone interested in IM. Then again, they might not care at all.

they won't care. Most prelim positions get filled with people going into other things. The percentage of folks who turn a prelim path into something categorical are exceedingly small. These are dead end jobs. The programs just need bodies they can work hard for a year, while their categoricals spend time in the OR.

That being said, a lot of the unfilled spots stay unfilled if the right applicants don't apply -- a program still needs people that can do the job without much headache or handholding -- they would rather have one less person than one that won't cut it. So OP don't think that just because there are unfilled spots that it will be easy to get one.

I think the first two points (particularly regarding time for interviewing) are valid. However a lot of IMGs simply won't have enough US clinical experience to make categorical paths comfortable, and you certainly will get a lot of it in a long houred prelim where you will live in the SICU, so I have to wonder if, even losing a year, this is necessarily the worst path for an IMG.
 
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The answer is "maybe".
1. You will use up one year of funding. That will leave you short of funding for your IM residency.
Could you explain this one please. Does that mean that only one year of PGY1 is funded for one person? What about people who have to repeat their intern year for some reason? Do they pay their own salary?
 
Could you explain this one please. Does that mean that only one year of PGY1 is funded for one person? What about people who have to repeat their intern year for some reason? Do they pay their own salary?

You don't pay your own salary, but (the oversimplified version is that) when you match, your funding amount locks in based on your selected residency path, and so if it takes an extra year of prelim, that's less funding your terminal program is going to get. You don't pay, the program eats some of the cost. But obviously as between two equal applicants, one being fully funded and one having used some funding up, the former is more attractive.
 
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