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THREE REASONS MOST RADIOLOGY RESIDENTS DO FELLOWSHIPS.
1. Amount of information that you have to master is insane. 4 years is not enough to be a very good radiologist. Sure you can set your goals to become an average radiologist BUT average radiologists get sued all of the time. By going into a fellowship, you decide to master the information in one discrete specialty.
2. Marketing. Fellowships brand you as an expert in a subspecialty. Private practice jobs preferentially hire subspecialists these days. Plus, it is near impossible to be an academic radiologist without a fellowship.
3. Mammography. No one wants to do these highly litigenous reads. You can have the eyes of the best mammographer in the world and you will still miss breast cancer because of the limitation of contrast. So you are literally hoping not to get sued.
Medical students see radiology as a easy lifestyle field. In reality, next to radiation oncology it is the most mentally taxing specialty of them all. THERE IS A REASON RADIOLOGY RESIDENCY IS 4 YEARS AND 80% OF residents do fellowships. YOU HAVE TO KNOW A LOT!!
Sometimes I laugh at the ER residents. They don't know crap. All they do is order a CT Head, CT Abdomen, and/or CT chest to bail them out. Plus, you can read very little as a ER resident and learn on the job by pattern recognition. If you don't read in radiology you will NOT survive.
This is something that I have to agree with P53 as an MS IV. Many residents by their 3-4 year who I have met and who originally shunned doing a fellowship ended up reversing their position because of these and many other reasons.
Radiology is anything but easy.....after spending a 8 hours concentrating in a reading room I go home totally exhausted. I do think reading outside of any area whether it is primary care or radiology is important but it is absolutely essential in Rads, and the Residents that I observed read and read extensively when they were not in a hospital.