Getting critical care spot after completing pulmonary fellowship

[pulm_doc]

Hello friends,

This is my first ever post on this forum. I need your input guys. I was planning to apply this year for 2015 pulm-critical care fellowship and have been offered a pulmonary fellowship (2 years straight) position at a reasonably good program, starting July 2014. I have pretty much made up my mind to go for it, but wanted your feedback. The advantage is that I am starting a year early, avoiding all the headache of going through the match/interview process, and have a chance to get in to critical care one year program after pulm fellowship. This way I may still be able to finish my training in total 3 years. Disadvantage is that I will have to do it separately in 2 programs to complete my pulm and critical care fellowship. I will appreciate your opinion as to how difficult it is to get one year critical care spot after finishing pulmonary fellowship. I know that doing pulmonary after critical care will cost total 4 years, but if I do pulm. first, it can save me a year!!

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[jdh71]

Hello friends,

This is my first ever post on this forum. I need your input guys. I was planning to apply this year for 2015 pulm-critical care fellowship and have been offered a pulmonary fellowship (2 years straight) position at a reasonably good program, starting July 2014. I have pretty much made up my mind to go for it, but wanted your feedback. The advantage is that I am starting a year early, avoiding all the headache of going through the match/interview process, and have a chance to get in to critical care one year program after pulm fellowship. This way I may still be able to finish my training in total 3 years. Disadvantage is that I will have to do it separately in 2 programs to complete my pulm and critical care fellowship. I will appreciate your opinion as to how difficult it is to get one year critical care spot after finishing pulmonary fellowship. I know that doing pulmonary after critical care will cost total 4 years, but if I do pulm. first, it can save me a year!!

It won't be difficult to find a critical care spot afterwards as long as you are willing to move wherever for a year.

 

[pulm_doc]

Thanks jdh71. I appreciate your response.

 

[Hernandez]

There is more to it than that. Since this would technically be your second fellowship, many places take that into consideration as if they are CMS funded spots, they only receive a fraction of the money and they could loose money to train you, if they're desperate to fill it wont matter and keep in mind that pulm-cc is getting more competitive so it will be harder to find a program to convert a pulm-cc spot to a cc for you.

 

[jdh71]

There is more to it than that. Since this would technically be your second fellowship, many places take that into consideration as if they are CMS funded spots, they only receive a fraction of the money and they could loose money to train you, if they're desperate to fill it wont matter and keep in mind that pulm-cc is getting more competitive so it will be harder to find a program to convert a pulm-cc spot to a cc for you.

There are plenty of one year CCM medicine spots to be filled at present without any desperation. Programs don't need to convert anything. Most fellowships are not funded by CMS funds anyway.

 

[Hernandez]

There are plenty of one year CCM medicine spots to be filled at present without any desperation. Programs don't need to convert anything. Most fellowships are not funded by CMS funds anyway.

I say this as my program went through this while I was chief, and it took DME level approval due to funds despite it technically an approved open spot

 

[jdh71]

I say this as my program went through this while I was chief, and it took DME level approval due to funds despite it technically an approved open spot

You are correct that funding can get funny if you have to do something odd or different with a PULM/critical care fellowship, but finding a year of critical care at those places that have medicine critical care programs are usually not a problem.