What fellowship is for...

[Gadofosveset]

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There seem to be a lot of questions regarding diagnostic radiology fellowships (mostly about ranking, which is about as useful/sensible as ranking the "best" car). I thought I'd add three cents about what radiology fellowship is for, mostly for med students

What fellowship is:

Major:

- Necessary to get a job
- An academic name to add to your CV (shallow, but true)
- To give residents from smaller/slower programs experience at a higher volume center with a wider range of pathology (crucial for those residents)
- To develop a set of new contacts: academic contacts, business contacts, and potential friends
- An opportunity to develop a specific subspeciality skill set at a center that is expert in it (e.g. MSK ultrasound at Thomas Jefferson or University of Michigan)
- An opportunity to develop a specific research interest with faculty interested in it

Minor:

- A potential new location if you want to try to get a job in that area (controversial)
- A way to develop leadership skills through teaching residents
- An opportunity to save some weird cases for canned lectures you'll recycle for the next 20 years
- A way to be obnoxious for 20+ years, recalling "When I was at [x]......"

What fellowship is not:

- An automatic stamp of quality, proportional to various ranking schemes
- A guaranteed skill set over an entire subspecialty
- A good way to pay down your bills
- A laugh and a half (controversial)

 

[shark2000]

There seem to be a lot of questions regarding diagnostic radiology fellowships (mostly about ranking, which is about as useful/sensible as ranking the "best" car). I thought I'd add three cents about what radiology fellowship is for, mostly for med students

What fellowship is:

Major:

- Necessary to get a job
- An academic name to add to your CV (shallow, but true)
- To give residents from smaller/slower programs experience at a higher volume center with a wider range of pathology (crucial for those residents)
- To develop a set of new contacts: academic contacts, business contacts, and potential friends
- An opportunity to develop a specific subspeciality skill set at a center that is expert in it (e.g. MSK ultrasound at Thomas Jefferson or University of Michigan)
- An opportunity to develop a specific research interest with faculty interested in it

Minor:

- A potential new location if you want to try to get a job in that area (controversial)
- A way to develop leadership skills through teaching residents
- An opportunity to save some weird cases for canned lectures you'll recycle for the next 20 years
- A way to be obnoxious for 20+ years, recalling "When I was at [x]......"

What fellowship is not:

- An automatic stamp of quality, proportional to various ranking schemes
- A guaranteed skill set over an entire subspecialty
- A good way to pay down your bills
- A laugh and a half (controversial)

Very well said.

I add one. Doing a fellowship does not guarantee that you will end up doing it most of your time in private practice. Pretty common to do an MSK fellowship and end up doing only 20% MSK. Also pretty common to do an IR fellowship and end up doing only 30% IR. Don't get surprised if you do more mammo or body/chest than MSK, IR or Neuro even if you are fellowship trained in the latter.

Bottom line: Fellowship is a year. Try to obtain as many skills as you can during residency. By the end of residency you should feel comfortable doing most of radiology. Doing an MSK or Neuro fellowship does not mean that you don't need to know how to do a lung biopsy or read MRCP.