Why is no one single boarding in heme?

[Bowel Movers and Shakers]

Hi all,

Just curious about this, because a lot of programs are functionally requiring their fellows to single board now. Out of all those programs, virtually all fellows i've met are choosing to single board in onc. No one's been able to give me a great reason besides "heme is boring" but honestly, you'd think that out of such a large number of people, at least one person should be more interested in heme than onc. Anyone have any idea as to what's going on. All these folks btw are interested in going into academics fwiw

Thanks

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[gutonc]

Because people like to get jobs after fellowship and single boarding in heme is a great way to minimize your options there. I'd hire 10-15 onc-only boarded docs for every 1 heme only.

Also, "a lot of programs" is a little misleading. True, some of the big name programs will make you single-board while still doing 3 full years so they can get extra work out of you. But it's certainly not the standard.

 

[Bowel Movers and Shakers]

Gotcha, thanks @gutonc that's good to know. Is it just because heme problems are rarer to see in the clinic?

 

[gutonc]

Gotcha, thanks @gutonc that's good to know. Is it just because heme problems are rarer to see in the clinic?

Outside of academics or a very large group, you're much less likely to be able to create a heme-only niche (even more so for benign heme only).

In my 2 clinic days this week (I'm in admin/leadership so only do half-time clinic now), I will see 36 patients. Of those, 3 (<10%) are heme malignancy patients (well within the purview of oncology only) and none are benign heme cases. I suspect that my partners have similar numbers and across the board, we probably see somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-15% benign heme and a similar percentage of malignant heme cases. There's no way I could pay more than 1 person to do just heme...and even that would be a stretch since I have 15 docs in 5 offices over a 250 square mile area.

 

[CatFactorial]

If I could I would. I prefer hematology and penury anyway.

plan right now is to double board and possibly not renew one of them depending on what I end up doing.