<p>Can anyone list the specialties available to those in med school?</p>
<p>There are no specialties in medical school.</p>
<p>i thought u had to specialize in surgery, pediatrics etc?</p>
<p>Specialization occurs once you've completed medical school. Then you get between 3-7 years (sometimes longer) of training in your particular field of medicine. This period of time is collectively called residency.</p>
<p>After completing the residency portion, individuals may have the option of pursuing a fellowship to further specialize their scope of practice. For example in internal medicine or pediatrics, they may choose training in a single body system (ie cardiology or gastroenterology) or age group (geriatrics for IM or Adolescents in peds) or set of medical circumstances (ie critical care medicine).</p>
<p>Residencies, even with a research internship and a year as a chief resident, rarely exceed 6 years. However, a fellowship is the only way for a physician/surgeon to specialize.</p>
<p>Surgical residencies with a research internship are routinely seven years. General surgery, neurosurgery, etc. are often 7 years at major academic centers.</p>
<p>To clarify a bit, doing a fellowship is not the way to specialize. A fellowship is more accurately a subspecialization after doing a residency in a medical specialty. For example, if you do a residency in anesthesiology, that is a medical specialty. Once you finish a 4 year program in that medical specialty, you can opt to do a fellowship in critical care,cardiac anesthesia, pediatric anesthesia, chronic pain, obstetric anesthesia,etc.
Likewise, if you did an internal medicine residency, which is 3 years, you could continue to get advanced training by doing a fellowship in cardiology,critical care, infectious disease, hematology,etc.</p>