<p>I was at a mentor dinner thing last night with a some students from my school and my mentor brought a friend with her. The friend is a dermatologist who recently completed her residency is dermatology a few years back. She mentioned something about how she finished a full surgical residency and a surgical fellowship first and then she somehow did a dermatology residency and fellowship. I couldn't ask her much about it since there were too many people and I was on the other end of the table. But I was wondering, how exactly does one do that---do a complete residency and then another residency following? Can someone decide they want to change and enter the match again after they have already completed a residency???</p>
<p>Of course. Some physicians do indeed switch specialties by re-entering the match and doing another residency. I don’t think that’s a great route but it can be done.</p>
<p>It is also possible to enter some programs by interviewing with the program director and being offered a spot outside the match. Possibly less so in very competitive fields, but many fields that require an initial year of primary care, general surgery, etc., will fill their internship spots through the match but add additional residents at the PGY-2 level outside the match program. </p>
<p>My program did this. We had 6 PGY-1s who came in through the match, but added 6 more directly into PGY-2. These were either people who had done a transitional year, people who’d started in something else and didn’t care for it, or people who had completed another residency and wanted to change specialties.</p>
<p>Yep - in fact, one of my med school professors was an internist for 20 years, then decided to do a residency in radiology and do that…</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies, all. I was just curious about it cuz I think she said she graduated in '97 and she’s still doing training. o_o</p>