ERJunkie said:
I'm entering an allopathic program as a MS1 in the fall. I've recently become interested in ped rad/onc. Although, the fellowships I've researched only require a general peds residency. Due to this being a comepetitive fellowship, does anyone think we will see an increase in students first competing a medpeds residency? How about research experience?
First, peds rad/onc is much much different than peds heme/onc. Peds heme/onc is a 3 year fellowship after a 3 year general pediatrics residency. They manage all apsects of a patient's cancer treatment and treat with chemo and refer to a surgeon if they feel their patients need surgical treatment and to a radiation oncologist if they feel their patients need radiation therapy. They do not perform the surgery and they do not administer radiation.
Peds rad/onc is not really a field of its own at most places. Radiation oncologists have a five year residency (an intern year being either transitional year or internal medicine followed by 4 years in rad onc). They are trained in the radiation treatment of all cancers (adult AND pediatrics) and most practice both treat adults and kids in practice. There are very few programs that provide a fellowship in peds rad onc and very few that practice solely on children. The number of children who get radiation is simply not adequate to allow a practice dedicated to children at the vast majority of institutions.
Rad onc residency is EXTREMELY competitive (match rate of abou 50%) and there are only a handful of programs in the country, many of which only accept 1-2 residents a year. The residency has a lot of training in physics and research is required at most places. It is among the highest paying fields in medicine and has one of the best lifestyles as well. On the other hand, general pediatrics is not competitive and heme/onc fellowship is competitive for pediatrics fellowships but not competitive in comparison to fields such as rad onc, derm, adult cardiology, ent, urology, etc.
Now to answer your questions, research is always helpful and required for most fellowships. It is not required to have research experience prior to this, but it always will help you if you have prior experience, especially experience where you have published or presented at scientific meetings.
As far as med-peds is concerned, I do not think med-peds would be helpful for someone going into peds heme-onc. If you go into med-peds, you will have adult medicine training that you will never use as a peds oncologist. I think it would be a waste of a year of residency and would also cost you elective time that is built into a general pediatrics residency but not in med-peds programs. I think that med-peds is only helpful for people going into pediatric subspecialties that treat adults with similar diseases, such as allergy/immunology and rheumatology. It would also be helpful for people going into fields where children with certain diseases are living into adulthood. For example, adults with congenital heart disease are often followed by pediatric cardiologists because of their knowledge of heart defects that adult cardiologists lack. People with cystic fibrosis are living into adulthood so med-peds training would similarly help pediatric pulmonologists. This does not apply to peds heme/onc.
