Residency and Fellowship Opportunities

            Having finished three to six years in a laboratory, MSTP students have developed strong research skills and critical experience in scientific discovery.  Many of you are recognized as leaders in your field.  If you complete a traditional residency and fellowship, including the two clinical years of medical school, you will be out of the laboratory and, for the most part, out of science, for at least eight years.  Your field will have advanced and many of your research skills will be out of date.  Therefore, as a prelude to your future as an academic physician, you may wish to consider non-traditional post medical school training pathways.  One choice is to decline residency and fellowship and instead go directly into a postdoctoral position.  This will result in the absence of a medical license and the inability to practice medicine.  For most of you, that option is not an attractive one.  Therefore, you may wish to consider as an option one of the many combined research/clinical graduate medical education programs. 

              In choosing the kind of program that is right for you, it is worth considering the balance of clinical practice and research that you would like to have in your career. In general, the combined programs serve to reduce what is recognized to be an already long training period by eliminating one year of residency and two years of fellowship. The final year of residency is a seasoning year, during which the senior resident learns how to efficiently manage both patients and a medical team. Thus if you plan to practice clinical medicine, the benefit of this additional year may be worth the extra time - it is a personal choice, and you may want to discuss it with practicing physician scientists.

              A few notes for those interested in specialties not listed here.  The best way to find whether a research track in a given specialty exists is to go to the university, link to its school of medicine, link to the department in which you are interested in residency training, and select the residency information page or pages.  By looking at the individual residency program you will often see if research is a major track, if it is encouraged or discouraged, if only 1-3 months of research elective time are available, etc. 

              On this page you will find links to the major boards and a brief summary of the research opportunities available to residents in each area.

 

Medical Certification Boards and Accepted Research Time Resulting in Certification:

  American Board of Anesthesiology

  http://www.theaba.org/booklet/index.html

  Clinical Scientist Track:  Six months of research during the last year of residency training.  Residents in anesthesiology complete a transitional year and three years of clinical anesthesiology training.

Total training period: four years

 

American Board of Dermatology

  http://www.abderm.org/residency.html

  Residents may include up to three months of elective time as research in the standard track.  The board also offers an Investigative/Academic Training Track, which will be described in some detail.  All residents complete a PGY-1 year of transitional or other approved first year of residency.  Residents in the Investigative/Academic Training Track spend 100% time in clinical work in PGY-2 (year 1 of dermatology residency).  They must also complete the equivalent of 125% clinical work (16 months) of clinical work over the remainder of their training (PGY-3 through PGY-5), leaving 20 months of research time.   Note, application must be made to the board at least 4 months prior to initiating dermatology training. 

Total training period, including transitional year: five years.

 

American Board of Internal Medicine:

  http://www.abim.org/cert/respath_pp.shtm

  Several alternatives are offered at many university programs including combined programs with board certification in internal medicine and subspecialty certification and integrated research tracks into standard programs in internal medicine.  See Residency programs in internal medicine page.

Total training period: three to six years

 

American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology:

  http://www.abpn.com/

  Psychiatry:  No indication of a formal research track.  However, some institutions (UCSF for example), have a clinical research track. 

  http://psych.ucsf.edu/pdf_files/crtip.pdf

  PGY-1 and PGY-2 are clinical years.  PGY-3 up to 33% of time can be devoted to research and up to 90% of time in PGY-4 can be research oriented. 

Total training period: four years

 

Neurology:  No evidence of a formal research track. 

Total training period:  three years for adult neurology; four years for pediatric neurology

 

American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology

  http://www.abog.org/

  No indication of a research track.  Some programs, such as UCLA's STAR program (http://www.star.med.ucla.edu/), may allow research for residents in Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Total training period: four years

 

American Board of Ophthalmology

  http://www.abop.org/index.html

  No indication of a research track.  Some programs, such as UCLA's STAR program (http://www.star.med.ucla.edu/), may allow research for residents in Ophthalmology.

Total training period: three years

 

American Board of Pathology

  http://www.abpath.org/ReqForCert.htm

  No research track is indicated but up to twelve months of research may be performed over the training period.

  Combined anatomic pathology and clinical pathology (AP/CP) up to twelve months of research.  Total training period: five years.

  Anatomic Pathology (AP) up to twelve months of research.

Total training period: four years

 

Clinical Pathology (CP) up to twelve months of research.

Total training period: four years.

 

American Board of Pediatrics

  http://www.abp.org/

  Two alternatives are offered including combined programs with board certification in pediatric and subspecialty certification (accelerated research) and 11 months for research (integrated research) tracks. 

  Research up to 11 months:  Integrated Research

Total training period: three years

  Research up to three years:  Accelerated Research:

  Total training period: up to six years, includes board certification in Pediatrics and subspecialty certification.

  Total training period: three to six years

 

American Board of Radiology

  http://www.theabr.org/

  The Holman Pathway

  http://www.theabr.org/Holman.htm

  A minimum of 36 months of clinical training (completed in PGY-1 through PGY-5 years).  Nine months of which must be completed in the PGY-1 year.  A minimum of 18 months, up to 21 months of  research time; however, one day of clinical work must be done per week over the 21 month period (20% clinical effort, 80% research effort).

Total training period: five years

 

American Board of Surgery

  http://home.absurgery.org/default.jsp?aboutbooklet

  No research track and no time for research indicated.  Some programs, such as UCLA's STAR program (http://www.star.med.ucla.edu/), may allow research for residents in Surgery.

Total training period: five years