Fellowship not contiguous with residency?

[Naphtali]

Hi all:

I figure it's never too early to do a little research on residency issues. (I'll be starting MD/PhD in the fall.) I'm interested in internal medicine, and in the int med subspecialties.

My question: if I want to do a fellowship, does it have to be immediately after residency? So, can I do my 3 years of IM, practice/do research/do a post-doc for a few years, and then do a fellowship? Is this allowed, allowed but frowned upon, technically allwoed be practically not, or simly not allowed?

Thanks.

-Naphtali

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[smackdaddy]

allowed.
if you are planning on doing research you may be better off applying for fellowship and doing research during your fellowship. esp if you already have your own area of interest. they can help you get grants to support yourself/themselves, which will increase your attractiveness when it comes time for a job. some places may even plan to allow you do to your clinical rotations first, and then hire you as junior faculty with protected time to do your research, depending on their needs.

if you want to work, that is fine too. you will need to explain what catalyzed your decision to work and then apply for fellowship but it is no big deal. it may be a bigger deal for you personally, meaning you will have to go through fellowship at an older age (taking orders from younger people), having kids you won't see as much, spouse accustomed to certain lifestyle etc.

and the NIH has loan forgiveness program for people who are interested in academic careers, if that is your concern. hopefully it you go md/phd your loans won't be too considerable though.

 

[task]

Smackdaddy makes a good point. Your PhD could position you to fast-track your IM residency (into two years) because you'll be spending a portion of your fellowship in research endeavors gearing you up for an academic career. This would be a research track in fellowship. The point is that you'd be spending more time in fellowship than if you did a clinical track. For example, one of my co-residents who is doing GI wants to go into academia, so she applied and got into the research fellowship track in the GI program here at Southwestern. She'll spend the first two years of fellowship in the lab, and the last two years in clinical rotations. She wants to go academic. She didn't have a PhD, but most people who go this route tend to have one.

Where I train (at Parkland) a lot of people take a year off between residency and fellowship, working as hospitalists or moonlighting for the year to make money, pay bills, and just have a year to play, so to speak. One of my friends who is doing Heme-Onc at Duke is doing just that, and another who is doing Heme-Onc at Hopkins is as well.