Curious about a type of practice

[loveoforganic2]

I'm only finished with second year (edit: of med school, not residency), but a career path that seems appealing to me is med/peds -> ped heme/onc. Continuity of care is a priority of mine, and I think a practice style that would both suit that and maintain some variety in day to day work would be 4 days a week practicing ped h/o associated with a residency program (education is also an interest) with 1 day a week set aside for an outpatient clinic that would have preference scheduling for h/o patients (adults and kids with prior chemo or RT or current heme issues). Is this practice style viable, and would there be enough of a patient load in an urban area to fill the outpatient clinic with mostly h/o patients?

Thanks in advance for any input, and sorry if this is a naive question - still early in training just trying to think about the future a bit

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Artefact]

I'm only finished with second year (edit: of med school, not residency), but a career path that seems appealing to me is med/peds -> ped heme/onc. Continuity of care is a priority of mine, and I think a practice style that would both suit that and maintain some variety in day to day work would be 4 days a week practicing ped h/o associated with a residency program (education is also an interest) with 1 day a week set aside for an outpatient clinic that would have preference scheduling for h/o patients (adults and kids with prior chemo or RT or current heme issues). Is this practice style viable, and would there be enough of a patient load in an urban area to fill the outpatient clinic with mostly h/o patients?

Thanks in advance for any input, and sorry if this is a naive question - still early in training just trying to think about the future a bit

If you want to be an academic peds heme/onc attending, why do the IM part? I'm pretty sure that you would be seeing patients in clinic, so that setup seems pretty reasonable. I'm not sure how much general peds you'd be doing in this situation, if any, but that question might be better addressed on the peds forum.

 

[gutonc]

I'm only finished with second year (edit: of med school, not residency), but a career path that seems appealing to me is med/peds -> ped heme/onc. Continuity of care is a priority of mine, and I think a practice style that would both suit that and maintain some variety in day to day work would be 4 days a week practicing ped h/o associated with a residency program (education is also an interest) with 1 day a week set aside for an outpatient clinic that would have preference scheduling for h/o patients (adults and kids with prior chemo or RT or current heme issues). Is this practice style viable, and would there be enough of a patient load in an urban area to fill the outpatient clinic with mostly h/o patients?

Thanks in advance for any input, and sorry if this is a naive question - still early in training just trying to think about the future a bit

Are you talking about an AYA Oncology type of practice? Where you focus on adolescents and young adults with cancer as well as survivorship? If so, while it's not necessary to do so, I know a few people who are doing this with a Med/Peds and a combined adult/peds hem-onc fellowship...just FTR, that's 8 years (minimum) of post-grad training.

But in general, if you want to treat kids, go the peds route. If you want to treat adults, go the IM route.

 

[loveoforganic2]

If you want to be an academic peds heme/onc attending, why do the IM part?

Hopefully the elaboration below explains a bit better

Are you talking about an AYA Oncology type of practice? Where you focus on adolescents and young adults with cancer as well as survivorship? If so, while it's not necessary to do so, I know a few people who are doing this with a Med/Peds and a combined adult/peds hem-onc fellowship...just FTR, that's 8 years (minimum) of post-grad training.

But in general, if you want to treat kids, go the peds route. If you want to treat adults, go the IM route.

Basically, serving as the med onc for your younger patient population and being available part time as a PCP to better coordinate/centralize the care of survivors. Thinking about the exact path toward what I had in mind (combined med/peds and combined h/o vs pursuing a single residency) was honestly probably getting ahead of myself. Sorry if I haven't elaborated at what I'm getting at well. I only have a rough idea of what exactly I want, and that's probably contributory to that

 

[gutonc]

Basically, serving as the med onc for your younger patient population and being available part time as a PCP to better coordinate/centralize the care of survivors. Thinking about the exact path toward what I had in mind (combined med/peds and combined h/o vs pursuing a single residency) was honestly probably getting ahead of myself. Sorry if I haven't elaborated at what I'm getting at well. I only have a rough idea of what exactly I want, and that's probably contributory to that

Pick one or prepare to suck at both of them.

 

[loveoforganic2]

Pick one or prepare to suck at both of them.

Fair, thanks for the input! (edit: since text doesn't translate well, I'm being genuine, not snarky)

 

[Socrates25]

The decision on how long to train needs to bear in mind your income potential, and its worth knowing up front that peds heme/onc make some of the lowest incomes in all of medicine. Most of the jobs are academic, and I know many peds heme/onc docs that make less than general peds (~ 100k).

Thats not to say that its a bad field, on the contrary I think it is a great specialty. But I would advise against going into extra years of training with double med/peds residency or double fellowship if you only want to do peds in the end.

 

[loveoforganic2]

The decision on how long to train needs to bear in mind your income potential, and its worth knowing up front that peds heme/onc make some of the lowest incomes in all of medicine. Most of the jobs are academic, and I know many peds heme/onc docs that make less than general peds (~ 100k).

Thats not to say that its a bad field, on the contrary I think it is a great specialty. But I would advise against going into extra years of training with double med/peds residency or double fellowship if you only want to do peds in the end.

I was under the impression the median salary hovered more around ~200k. Maximizing salary isn't an overriding concern for me - I tend to view it as more of a "set a minimum I'd be content with then find my ideal job from there" thing - but I'm pretty sure 100k would fall below that mark for me. I'll be sure to keep investigating the salary in mind when I better explore my interest in the field. Thank you for the information

 

[Socrates25]

I was under the impression the median salary hovered more around ~200k. Maximizing salary isn't an overriding concern for me - I tend to view it as more of a "set a minimum I'd be content with then find my ideal job from there" thing - but I'm pretty sure 100k would fall below that mark for me. I'll be sure to keep investigating the salary in mind when I better explore my interest in the field. Thank you for the information

Oh I'm sure the median is quite a bit higher than 100k, just saying that those jobs are out there, especially in academics.