White-Tiger Posted June 14, 2009 Report Share Posted June 14, 2009 I was looking over CaRMS stats and noticed that Nuclear Medicine regularly gets less first-choice applicants than there is spots available...why is that? I would of figured that as an imaging speciality it would be more popular, specially given the competitiveness of radiology? So what is it about Nucs that makes it so unpopular? Is the salary bad? Is it dreadfully boring? Or is it simply a total lack of exposure in medical school? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jochi1543 Posted June 14, 2009 Report Share Posted June 14, 2009 I'm gonna go with lack of exposure. Same situation in PM&R, for example. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lactic Folly Posted June 14, 2009 Report Share Posted June 14, 2009 Very cool field.. but job availability is better for those who are dual certified in nuclear medicine and diagnostic radiology. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_B Posted June 14, 2009 Report Share Posted June 14, 2009 I was looking over CaRMS stats and noticed that Nuclear Medicine regularly gets less first-choice applicants than there is spots available...why is that? I would of figured that as an imaging speciality it would be more popular, specially given the competitiveness of radiology? So what is it about Nucs that makes it so unpopular? Is the salary bad? Is it dreadfully boring? Or is it simply a total lack of exposure in medical school? From my limited experience, I would say: 1) Lack of exposure. 2) Dreadfully boring (unlike rads, you don't have volume in your practice, as it takes time for studies since you have to inject them with radioactive stuff and wait.) 3) Fear that the specialty is going to go away with Rads + fellowship taking its place. Salary isn't bad though, and the training (hours wise) is pretty sweet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noncestvrai Posted June 15, 2009 Report Share Posted June 15, 2009 Soooo chill hours, their call is almost the best of all, they close shop around 6PM or so, until no more radiotracers are left in enough qty...then it becomes CT angio for PE...=( ha! Lots of different types of studies, PET, SPECT... with improving spatial resolution. I was THIS close to go for the dual programme rad-nucs, but 7 years is a long time, without even a fellowship. I doubt that in Canada, without writing the Royal college exam for nucs, you will be able to read nucs studies. I would recommend to do at least a couple of weeks to check it out if you're imaging oriented just to see if you like it. noncestvrai Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CW VW Posted June 15, 2009 Report Share Posted June 15, 2009 Most, if not all of the nucs docs I have spoken with have said that it would not be a good idea to go into a nuclear medicine program that does not offer dual certification at this time. The reasons for this have been mentioned above. (1) Few jobs for nucs certified docs that can't do rads as well, and the nucs doc will not be as competitive for a job as someone who is dual certified. (2) The Royal College nuclear medicine specialty may end up being "swallowed" by radiology (+ fellowship) at some point. Another thing is that you will probably not see nucs docs reading PET/CT unless they are dual certified. Partly because of liability reasons. If something is missed on the CT scan that the nucs physician is not certified to read then it could cause problems. So...the problem is that there are only 2-3 spots per year in the whole country that offer dual certification (Alberta, Manitoba and sometimes Dal) so they are very competitive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CW VW Posted June 15, 2009 Report Share Posted June 15, 2009 Also, some programs will allow some of their radiology residents to add on 1-2 years and do some nuclear medicine training in order to write both royal college exams. I know Toronto does this for a couple of their residents per year if they are interested. I don't know a whole lot about this, but I got the feeling that it was one of those things that if you wanted to do the extra nucs training, then you would have no problem getting the funding for the extra years. The difficult part is you need to match to Toronto radiology first. Some other schools likely do this too, but I don't know which ones. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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