Teaching/ Non-clinical route post residency

[jadedEResident]

I'm a second year ER resident and looking to move towards more of a non-clinical route in the future. I've done a bit of teaching prior to going to medical school and anted to know how to get into teaching post residency? I've seen people do toxicology fellowships and go on to be professors at med schools, etc. Love tox but the 2 year fellowship seems excessive. Any other ideas?

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[JacobMcCandles]

Don't do a fellowship unless you want to do a fellowship. The biggest thing you can do is show interest during residency. Are you currently in a 3 or 4 year residency? If you're in a 3 year residency then there's basically a zero percent chance a 4 year residency will higher you as staff since you'll technically be the same PG year as the 4th years. If you're at a 4 year residency then it's pretty much free game.

 

[DeadCactus]

More specific details on what exactly you want to do, why, and the timeframe you have in mind would be helpful.

 

[DrDrummer]

It would be a very difficult thing trying to get a job teaching medicine without practicing clinical medicine. You might be qualified to teach physiology or anatomy or something at a community college level, or be a very overqualified HS teacher once certified, but other than that it seems tough. If you really want out of EM (and you should know that there's a lot of different ways to practice EM, and that life can change in a lot of ways if you want it to after training) you could do occupational medicine training, hyperbarics, wound care, palliative care, tox (and then go work for pharmaceutical companies or do legal work if you really don't like clinical medicine), addiction medicine or take your license and go to telemed or open a med spa or something like that. Lots of ways to do it, but you're probably not going to be teaching MS1/2s without a clinical appointment.

 

[Backpack234]

I like the non-em options you mentioned. Can you tell me more about the different ways to practice EM? To me it seems like busy shop or slow shop. urgent care, ER, or FSED. Only if you can find a job.

 

[Birdstrike]

I'm a second year ER resident and looking to move towards more of a non-clinical route in the future. I've done a bit of teaching prior to going to medical school and anted to know how to get into teaching post residency? I've seen people do toxicology fellowships and go on to be professors at med schools, etc. Love tox but the 2 year fellowship seems excessive. Any other ideas?

Teaching as a physician usually looks a lot like, "Doctor who treats patients, teaches student-doctor how to treat patients." It often allows you to reduce your clinical time, but not to zero. If you have no clinical time at all, what are you actually teaching your students to do? How to not be a doctor?

For example: I've been teaching a resident for the past 8 hours, how to treat patients, while treating patients (currently have a minute to post, due to a patient no-show).

I see where you're going with this. Non-clinical jobs have definite advantages, but most physician teaching jobs are at least partly clinical. An exception would be someone that also has a PhD and does basic science research and teaches medical students during years 1 and 2, but not during the clinical rotations and not residents. I'm not sure exactly how you'd dovetail your EM career into that type of career, but I'm sure there's likely some way. You might have to use some creativity to accomplish that.

 

[Frazier]

I'm a second year ER resident and looking to move towards more of a non-clinical route in the future. I've done a bit of teaching prior to going to medical school and anted to know how to get into teaching post residency? I've seen people do toxicology fellowships and go on to be professors at med schools, etc. Love tox but the 2 year fellowship seems excessive. Any other ideas?

There's no offense intended -- if someone feels that a 2-year fellowship for toxicology is excessive, then EM toxicology is not the subspecialty for that person. Those people crave and eat that sort of academic environment/experience up. I worry it doesnt sound like a path where you would thrive. We all hope for you to do exactly that and nothing less.

What are some of the reasons for you wanting to go non-clinical?

What do you hope to teach?

 

[B52forU]

if you want to teach future doctors on how to be a doctor with no clinical experience of practicing as a physician on your own that doesn't really make sense...

 

[Arcan57]

if you want to teach future doctors on how to be a doctor with no clinical experience of practicing as a physician on your own that doesn't really make sense...

Except that's not quite what the OP is trying to do. Finishing a 3 yr residency isn't no clinical experience, it's just significantly less than the 15-30 yrs of attending experience that a lot of the MD lecturers during M1/2 years have.

That being said, being a PGY-2 and being an attending are pretty different experiences. OP sit down and make a list what's making you feel like clinical medicine doesn't work for you, what you do like about it, and what you're willing to accept in terms of lifestyle/income in order to be in the job you want.

If you went into EM, it's unlikely you're just a blanket misanthrope. If you find it unsatisfying to take care of your current hospital's population, who do you like taking care of (rural patients, kids, vets, worried well, high SES, etc)? If you feel like the actual practice is too cognitively exhausting, where are your stumbling blocks? Almost everything from a cognitive/procedure standpoint in EM is a skill that can be improved. There are tons of resources for breaking down complex, highly stressful situations into discrete, manageable tasks. If you're looking at teaching, have you looked into EMS direction?

If you're certain that exclusively being a pit doc isn't tolerable as a career, start taking action now. The people in charge of handing out jobs and appointments cast their favor with the applicants that are running towards something, not away from something. If you want to teach, then start picking up teaching roles. If you want to do tox or wilderness or admin work, find someone that's doing that and become their mentee. Aiming for pretty much anything other than pit doc is going to require significantly more initial upfront work.

 

[sylvanthus]

if you want to teach future doctors on how to be a doctor with no clinical experience of practicing as a physician on your own that doesn't really make sense...

Sounds like 1/2 my attendings in residency.