<p>What exactly is a fellowship? How much do you get payed for it (normal salary of doctor, or is it more like a residency)? Finally, is it required?</p>
<p>A fellowship is a period of time after one's residency that fulfills the requirements needed to subspecialize in a given field.</p>
<p>You do not need a fellowship unless you want to specialize in a field that is not fully covered by your residency. </p>
<p>You are paid as a 4th - 7th year house officer. (you can google "house officer salary" to find what typical pay is. Generally, 1st year HO salary is about 44-47k, and subsequent years typically have raises of 1500 - 3000 per year depending on which hospital you are at.</p>
<p>Some of this probably is a little esoteric, so let me give you a couple of examples.</p>
<p>Right now, as a second year medical student I think I want to be a pediatric cardiologist. To reach this goal, I will need to go through a three year pediatric residency. During the residency I will rotate through various specialties in peds, as well has do a lot of inpatient general pediatrics and outpatient/private clinic work. How each program does all this is different, but there are certain national guidelines set forth so that everyone coming out of an accredited residency has the necessary and sufficient knowledge to be a general pediatrician. Some people enter the residency knowing they want to go into a specific area, and can get extra exposure there, others find something that they love and others still decide that they want to be a generalist.</p>
<p>After completing the residency, I could just go out into private practice, join a group of doctors or start my own office. However if I do want to do cardiology, I would apply for a fellowship in pediatric cardiology, which is 3 years in length. During that time, the focus and training is on cardiology pretty much all the time. You more specifically learn the diagnostic skills and therapeutic techniques necessary to be proficient on one's own. </p>
<p>In peds and internal medicine the fellowships are 3 years in length after a 3 year residency. In other specialties the fellowships may be longer or shorter just as the residencies are of variable length.</p>
<p>Say you wanted to be an interventional radiologist. The path would look like this:</p>
<p>1 year in either a transitional program or preliminary medicine or preliminary surgery program</p>
<p>4 years in a diagnostic radiology residency (so a total of 5 years in radiology residency) where you'll learn the necessary knowledge/skill to be a competent radiologist.</p>
<p>1 year in interventional fellowship</p>
<p>Hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions...</p>
<p>Thanks! You seem very knoweldgable...so let me ask...can you say the specific path (as you have stated for other things) if you want to go into infectious diseases (in internal medicine) and neurology.</p>
<p>Infectious diseases: 3 year internal medicine residency, followed by a two year fellowship. Many Infectious disease physicians are very involved in management of AIDS patients.</p>
<p>Neurology is a 4 year residency in which the first year is a preliminary or transitional year. This is one path where regardless of intended specialty (pain, child, neuromuscular, clinical neurophysiology) w/i neurology a prelim in medicine is probably more beneficial than a surgery prelim. That is certainly not the case for other residencies/sub specialties.</p>
<p>So, for neurology, 4 year residency and that is it? No fellowship are anything else?</p>