dual subspeciaitly

[jordan19]

Hey!

I was wondering how common it is for IM docs to get dual subspecialties after the 3/4 years of IM. Personally, i was hoping to choose two subspecialties that overlap, like infectious disease and allergy&immunology. Was just wondering who had insight on this, and how difficult would it be to obtain such!

thanks,

J

[snowday]

I've been looking into this as well, a doc I've worked pretty closely with is dual rheum/allergy+immuno, which overlap pretty heavily...we can talk about it at lunch tomorrow lol

[japlanet]

In theory it's only as difficult as getting accepted to two fellowships.

 

You have to consider whether it is worth the opportunity cost at that point in your career, though. 2 years of fellowship at 80K or so versus 2 years of practice at 200-300K. And what is the benefit? Many would argue that if the two fields overlap, you can just practice in one and expand your 'area of interest' and clinical focus into the areas of the other specialty that you are interested in.

[cheech10]

Definitely possible, but you have to have a pretty good reason or explanation as to how the subspeciaties mesh together. Ultimately, you'll have to convince both program directors to allow it, get the Royal College to approve the training schedule, and may need to get funding. It helps to have a less popular specialty as one of your choices, as they are often more accommodating.

[Satsuma]

You also have to consider employment opportunities and whether a centre is going to hire you to do each specialty part-time.

 

Even for things like critical care, this can be tough depending on the specialty.

For example, at my centre, it is almost impossible to blend ER and Critical Care (training is fine, getting a job after harder). The centre needs to use critical care to recruit the internists etc and not so much the ER docs. So they keep their critical care spots open to entice those they need to recruit.

[cheech10]

Critical care, ER, and anaesthesia are all good choices for one doing 2 specialties, because there are no clinical responsibilities once you are off service, but the job market is getting very tight. A second specialty may help you define a niche for yourself, but may also make you a poor fit for a department depending on your clinical responsibilities in the second specialty.

 

In the past, resp/icu was offered as a combined specialty, but this has become quite rare. Few recent resp grads do a lot of icu, choosing instead to focus on outpatient resp practice. Surgery/icu is also becoming uncommon for new grads, as it is very difficult to shut down a busy surgical practice for a week or two at a time (although you can book ORs and clinics around it, you're likely to still have some inpatients at any given time).

[Satsuma]

I've seen cardiac surgeons and emerg docs do icu (emerg docs taking some emerg shifts in their off weeks) so this must be center specific. I've also seen some docs that do icu only and take the rest of the time off, albeit they cover more icu than a doc who does icu and their base specialty.

 

I guess it shows how center dependent this can be.

 

 

Yes completely centre specific. As I mentioned it can depend on recruitment issues.

 

I see you are at MAC though, and there are no ER\ICU docs at either Joe's or HHS.

 

You may have seen emerg residents doing CCCA shifts. There are many who do those.

[Satsuma]

Nah not mac, uwo

 

 

Oops, haha, I think I was half asleep!