Masters During Residency

[johnstickienote]

I am wondering if anybody has any perspectives or experience with pursuing a masters degree during residency. How is this done?

 

From my understanding, one would do a masters during the fourth year of a five year residency.Is this the case?

 

Are graduate degrees pursued during residency funded by the program? Can you got to a different university to pursue it?

 

(How) are you able to take time off from your program, and wouldn't you lose any clinical skills as a result of taking a year or so off?

 

Can you pursue a masters degree through different residencies? In my experience I have only heard of people doing an MPH during a residency in PH and Preventive Medicine, or MPH / MSc / M.Ed during surgical residencies. How might pursuing a masters look / be possible during an internal medicine or anesthesia residency?

 

What is the difference between a clinical fellowship and a clinician investigator?

 

Sorry for all the questions... I am just very curious!!

[Edict]

Clinical fellowship is basically sub-specializing. 

 

Terminology can be confusing but in Canada we call Internal Medicine a residency. We also call a sub-specialty of internal medicine a residency. So Cardiology is considered a residency in Canada. If you further subspecialize in Cardiology you can do so in Heart Failure/Transplant Cardiology for example and in that case that is a "clinical fellowship".

 

In the US they will call Cardiology a fellowship and Heart Failure/Transplant Cardiology also a fellowship or sometimes a "super fellowship"

 

Clinician investigator usually means they are an attending and they do clinical research. Correct me if I'm wrong on this. 

[ploughboy]

Like lots of other things, it depends...

 

Do you want a masters so you can mention at cocktail parties that you went to Harvard?  Do you want one to protect your fledgling career from the creeping credentialism that is infiltrating academic medicine?  Are you simply passionate about some topic and want to develop your intellectual tools so that you can focus your career on it?   People have done masters for all of those reasons, and your motivation might change your approach.

 

What sort of masters you do depends on your motivation and interests and not your field of clinical practice.  There's enough scope of practice in every field that pretty much anybody from any field could make a case to do any masters degree (I'm sure if I thought hard enough I could come up with a combination that simply doesn't make sense to do, but it would take some thinking...)

 

I have met, worked, am friends with with people who have done the following combos:

 

MPH - family, emerg, internal (GIM and various subspecialties), GSx, ENT, anesthesia, public health

MEd - family, emerg, internal, GSx, anesthesia

MSc (epi) - internal, emerg, GSx

MSc (basic science) - internal, GSx, pathology

MBA - emerg, internal, family

 

There are lots more out there, that's just a representative sample.

 

When you do it depends on your circumstances, motivation and quite frankly the opportunities that present themselves by chance at various points in your career.

 

There are residencies that have large blocks of protected time that can be used toward a masters.  U of T's EM program has basically a wide-open 4th year during which you can do whatever you want (within reason).  People have used that to obtain MPHs, MBAs, MEds, start on MScs, etc.  There are "clinician scientist" programs where you get a couple of years of financial support to do a grad degree in the middle of your residency. There are some surgical programs that seem to have either built-in, mandatory, research years or are super-accomodating in granting residents paid time to do masters degrees, but that's just my observation and I don't know specifics.  Similarly, I know of internists who have disappeared for a couple of years to do grad school and aren't in a clinician scientist program, but somehow they got financial support.

 

If you look at somebody's CPSO records and their trajectory is "PGY-1, PGY-2, PGY-3, PGY-3, PGY-3, PGY-4, PGY-5" it's likely that they did a grad degree during their residency.  Or had babies.  Or both.  Point being, it's pretty common.

 

It's also common to do grad school after residency, either part time as a practicing doc or after you've worked for a couple of years and have paid off your debt and built a buffer to live on while you're in school again.

 

So there are many ways to do this and it all gets back to why you want to do what you want to do, and the opportunities that present themselves.  It might not feel like it at the moment, but now that you've gotten into med school (congrats, btw!) you are very much in control of a lot of your destiny (ok, maybe you won't feel that way until after you've matched in CaRMS...) and if you want things to happen you will be able to find ways to make them happen.  And, there will likely be institutional support along the way if you go looking for it.

 

Regarding definitions:

 

Clinical fellow - A practical definition is somebody who is doing additional clinical training after completing his/her base specialty.  So for instance, a fully trained and licensed emerg doc doing two years of training in critical care medicine gets called a fellow.  (Though to be hair-splittingly technical, I'm still a resident according to my paymaster.  For all intents and purposes I'm a fellow -- that's what my program refers to me as, that's what my email signature and biz cards say, and when a patient is crumping and the nurses are yelling "we need the fellow over here right now!" it's me they want).

 

Clinician investigator - attending staff physician who spends a large portion of his/her time (usually 50%-75%) doing research in one form or another.   It implies that you've got significant infrastructure, financial support, and a staff working for you.   Many attendings at teaching hospitals do research along with their clinical duties, but if you're only doing it 25% of the time you're not considered a clinician investigator (at least where I work).

 

Good luck!

[johnstickienote]

Wow Ploughboy that is so comprehensive!! Thank you so much for clarifying!

You are certainly right, getting a better hold of what my interests, desires and reasons are for pursuing a masters would be helpful. Hopefully Ill come to flesh those interests out a bit more over the coming 4 years!

I am not a basic sciences person, so I dont see myself pursuing a biology-based MSc anytime soon. I am also going in to med with a masters (but not really relevant to my future career). I have always thought of doing an MPH down the line and so its reassuring to know its not just avaialable to those in Sx or public health residencies.

 

Thanks again!!

[ploughboy]

No problem.  I should add, for completeness:

 

Research fellow - clinician who is doing additional training in research methods for a couple of years.  Usually spends his/her days at a desk or in the lab, depending on the context.  Depending on the contract may be required to provide some clinical coverage a couple of times a month, often weekends and holidays.  That's a bit of a bummer, but since usually the rest of your time is yours to use as you please it's generally not a huge sacrifice.  Especially because, depending on your contract and qualifications, that clinical coverage might be billable to the government at a rate that reflects your training and market value (eg you take out an appendix on a Saturday, you bill full rate for doing so).

[K1972]

Reviving an old thread with a couple of questions:

 

1. Is your program generally allowed to deny you from doing a Masters degree mid-residency (eg using the excuse that there is not enough residents for coverage, putting patient safety at risk)?

 

2. (Stupid question) Would provincial government or your residency program provide any payment or funding for or during your Master’s degree (eg because it is “furthering your qualifications”)?

 

3. For those in small (low number of residents) programs who have taken a year off to do a Masters: how do you deal with the guilt of everyone else having to do more work because you are taking a year off?