What would a fellowship program think?

[Dogdaysofsummer]

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All,
I am planning to apply for a geriatric psychiatry fellowship. I really find geri psych interesting and know, without doubt, that I would like to do the fellowship. My dilemma is that I am really interested in cross cultural psychiatry as well. Ideally, I would like to combine geri and cross cultural to some degree in my future practice. I am thinking of pursuing a masters in medical anthropology between PGY 4 and the fellowship. Do you think the fellowship would look at this as
a) great that I'm getting more education, learning about cross cultural issues
b) bad, I'm taking a year away from clinical work
c) _____________

I don't have a geri psych fellowship at my program so don't have someone in the know to ask about this.
thanks for any feedback!

 

[Chimed]

Sounds like you have a specific interest and should pursue that. It certainly won't hurt you to pursue a specific niche and will only add to your CV. The only thing that might address your concern about not doing clinic work for a year is to keep that up by moonlighting. Could you work one or two 1/2 days a week in a nursing home? That will help keep your clinical skills up.

But adding gero with a cross cultural interest sounds really interesting. Go for it! 👍

 

[whopper]

It's going to depend on the individual opinion of the PD and anyone else he/she uses as advisors on who should get in.

To give you a clue on what I mean, my fellowship PD (ranked one of the top doctors in the country and advanced the field of mathematics) occasionally gets a "why did you get a masters in philosophy."

Now, this guy is too well-accomplished these days to have that be a problem for him.

But I have seen some closed-minded and egocentric people develop such attitudes in people with multiple interests. I took off a year in medschool and ran a small business. If anything I think that helped me to become a better doctor in several ways....

But I got from a lot of people "Oh why did you take a year off" with the typical condescending look. "Well Dr. we have plenty of other applicants and they didn't run a business. I don't know why anyone interested in medicine would do such a thing."

Likewise, I've seen the same attitude pulled in other cases. E.g. I've occasionally seen someone interested in more than one field and they decide psychiatry. Then some attending mentions "well, ahem, they also like ob-gyn, that makes me question their desire to go into psychiatry."

I find these attitudes snooty but they are out there. Personally, if I was in firm standing to go into a field, I wouldn't care at all if people pulled this attitude. I'd only give people with this attitude any thought at all if you were gunning for 1 specific program, then I'd try to find out the PD's attitude with this type of thing if possible.