Questions for Residents, When are you allowed to prescribe medicine ?

[Notepad]

Hi, I have a few questions for Residents:

 

(1) When or at which point in time are MDs allowed to prescribe medicine ?(ie, prescription drugs, not OTC)

 

(2) WHAT ARE you allowed to do in PGY-1 ? Are you just limited to prescribe medicine inside the Training site ? (Can you prescribe medicine, say, to family members / friends ?) Does the Certificate of Training from MCC allow you at all to prescribe medicine outside the Training site (or without supervision) ?

 

(3) Can those MDs - who trained in other specialties longer than Family Medicine, say Internal Medicine - practice Family Medicine ?

 

(4) If you trained in Family Medicine, and practice, can you later in the future enter other Specialty training ? If so, what PGY-? do you start ?

 

(5) You are in PGY-1, and your family member(s) or friend(s) need your help outside the teaching site -- what are the limitations, to the work you can do with these people ? what are the major things you can do and cannot do from licensing perspective ?

 

(6) Your family member(s) or friend(s) have their own family physician, and you are in PGY-1, can you work alongside with that physician if requested by your family member or friend (or by anybody not related to you) ?

 

(7) You just finished your PGY-2 in Family Medicine, you also passed your Family Board Certification Exam, after careful consideration, you decided not to practice just yet, instead you want to do more postgraduate training, say in Internal Medicine -- while it is possible, how easy/difficult will that be in terms of re-entering CARMS again ? (At the scale of 1-5, 5 being the most difficult) ?

 

(8) You just finished PGY-3 in Internal Medicine, and passed your Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Certification Exam -- you decided you want to be Family Physician, do you have to do extra PGY training in Family Medicine ?

 

That's a lot already, I have to stop. haha But these are the questions that some of my close friends and I needed to know, and we're appreciative if anyone can answer them. Thanks much.

 

Rebecca

[TimmyMax]

Hey,

 

In general, it is discouraged for physicians to treat their family members and friends. Why? Because emotion clouds objectivity and it's not all that ethical.

While it's certainly okay to write the odd script for amoxicillin for your 2-year-old niece who has an ear infection (and won't stop screaming), beyond that you're asking for trouble.

[crackers]

You're not supposed to write prescriptions for anyone outside the patient care areas you're working in. If that's outpatients or ER, and they need a refill on their beta-blocker, write it. (Maybe not their 120mg of oxycodone three times a day!) If that's inpatients, then you write their discharge scripts.

 

No one will get mad at you if a resident colleague or nurse looks like death and needs a script for antibiotics, although it's not strictly kosher. Less good is writing scripts for things like OCP or sedatives for colleagues, friends, or ESPECIALLY family, particularly until you get your license at the end of your residency.

[everyoneloveschem]

What happens when you live in a small rural area? If you are the only doctor, wouldn't you end up tending the minor woes of your family?

[Rome]

(8) You just finished PGY-3 in Internal Medicine, and passed your Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Certification Exam -- you decided you want to be Family Physician, do you have to do extra PGY training in Family Medicine ?

 

Hey there,

 

I worked with a family doc who did exactly that, after finishing her IM residency, she decided she really wanted family instead. She was able to transfer some of her rotations completed during her 3 year residency into the family med program. She ended having to do only one extra year for compulsory family med stuff. Mind you, she was able to get to know the family med program director well during her IM training and I think this helped with the transfer.

 

I guess to answer you questions, about extra training once in Family medicine program, it all depends on where you are coming from and whether the program is flexible in accepting your past training credits.

 

Hope this helps!

[crackers]

A technical note: you don't write your Royal College exams at the end of PGY-3 internal medicine. You match to a subspecialty that year, and write your exams late in your PGY-4 year. The residency is a total of four years; if you do a subspecialty beyond that, you write that subspecialty exam in the last year of your fellowship.