Nuclear Medicine

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DD214_DOC

DD214_DOC

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Anyone have any information on the nuclear medicine residency? How competitive is it? How are the hours of a nuclear med physician? I have seen the residency is about 3 yrs total, and they have a decent salary. But, what do they do?

I ran across this and thought, as much as I enjoyed physics and this sorta stuff, maybe it's up my alley.
 
Nuclear medicine is a two year residency following at least one year of a clinical residency (usually internal medicine). It provides training in the gamut of nuclear medicine, from thryoid ablations, to bone scans, to PET scans.

Unfortunately, the major downside of nucs is that radiologists are also trained to intepret and perform nuclear medicine studies (currently 6 months of nucs is required in residency, but may be decreased to 4 months). Radiologists can also do a fellowship in nuclear medicine. Thus, when looking for a position in private practice, straight nuc med trained physicians are at a real disadvantage (can't take rads call, can't do any other portion of radiology). From what I have heard, these jobs are few. However, academic jobs are still out there.
 
are there any fellowships open to nuc grads? can they possible weasel into any of the fellowships for people who did DR? is it possible for them to complete a fellowship to become DR certified?

most hospital nuclear medicine specialists that i've seen so far completed rads and then did the fellowship in nucs to be dually board certified in radiology and nuclear medicine.
 
You definitely cannot go to a DR fellowship. None of them will accept a nuc med only trained applicant because you do not have the necessary background. The Nucs fellowship after DR is the same thing as a straight nucs residency (in fact we have on nucs resident and one radiology trained nucs fellow at my hospital and they both do the same thing).

Some have thought of using this as a stepping stone to a radiology residency. I'm sure it is possible to do so, but in todays competitive environment, unless you were already competitive for rads to begin with, the chances are very low that you will be accepted.
 
JKDMed said:
Anyone have any information on the nuclear medicine residency? How competitive is it? How are the hours of a nuclear med physician? I have seen the residency is about 3 yrs total, and they have a decent salary. But, what do they do?

I ran across this and thought, as much as I enjoyed physics and this sorta stuff, maybe it's up my alley.
Click to expand...

WBC has said enuf.
I would like to add,
1)Nucs is expanding very fast in numerous directions, so its definitely going to get a much better speciality in the coming years.
2)The job situation can only get BETTER.

So, for all those interested, def go for it.
 
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