After completing 6 year MD program?

Pre-Med & Medical School Multiple Degree Programs
1

I was recently looking at certain accelerated medical college programs, and I was curious about what you would do after completing the program. Do you receive your MD, and start residency or what? I honestly don’t want to do 4 entire years of residency to become an anesthesiologist…can someone clear the specs and details up? Thanks!

2

Yes, you will get MD after completing 4 years of MD education (irrespective you went thru regular or BS/MD programs). But you can not practice unless you complete residency of your choice and get board certified. So residency is inevitable and it can vary from minimum 3 years to 7-8 years depending on the level of your specialty and sub-specialty.

3

Good to know! But is there any way to decrease the amount of years that you have to perform residency?

4

Yes. It depends on what specialty you plan to do and also what specialty you get (residency match is very competitive and intense application process). In general family practice, internal medicine and Ped will take 3 years after MD.
Typical MD student changes few times during MD education and rotation what specialty s/he wants to do. So first you need to decide if medicine is your career or not. Volunteer and interact with clinicians and shadow to get good exposure and decide before join college.

5

Not with regard to anesthesia as far as I know. There are certain combined residency/fellowship programs (mostly in internal medicine) where you can shave time off your residency but that is in exchange for more time during fellowship so the overall training time is unchanged. These programs are geared towards starting a research career so being able to have more time with fewer clinical duties is very helpful. There is no straight up “accelerated residency program.” The accelerated BS/MD programs are not really accelerated MDs, they are more accelerated undergrads.

6

If the 4 years undergrad + 4 years med school + 4 years residency is too long, consider these alternative pathways:

  1. [Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA)](Nurse Anesthetist) requires 4 years BSN + 1 year critical care work experience + 18-24 months MSN

  2. [Anesthesologist Assistant (AA)](Anesthesiologist Assistant) requires 4 years undergrad + 2 years MS