Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Cardiology Fellowship – How to Get In?

American Medical Graduates (AMG) – you have worked hard and you deserve an easier path to fellowship. You still have to be pretty good, not exceptional like FMGs, but good. Then all you have to do is wake up on a fine day, fall out of bed and more than likely you will be able to get a cardiology fellowship unless you are a complete fool and really get the program director upset with your interview. Other than a few rare circumstances you can pretty much get a fellowship if you chose to do so. But this is great for you, as you have worked hard over the years to secure admission into a great medical school and residency and you deserve the fruits of your labor.

Foreign Medical Graduates (FMG) – this is a whole different kettle of fish. Get ready to show yourself to be great. Average, even good will not do, you have to set yourself apart from all the others trying to get the very limited spots out there. So here are some thoughts – the Real Deal (no sugar coating).

  1. Every Problem has a Solution. Stay true to those words, as there will be a few set backs before you get your spot. Be prepared for “what if.” If you do not get a spot in your first try, do not get caught off-guard and be prepared for the next step. Have something else lined up, applications ready for the extra year or research or another fellowship.
  2. Extra Steps/Work Needed. As a FMG, you can get lucky and get a position without much research or an extra year. You will need to do research or Chief Resident year to make your application stand out from the rest.
  3. Build Connections. The best chance you likely will have is at your own hospital, so make sure you stay involved with your cardiology department from the beginning of your residency.
  4. Research. This is almost a must; it helps a great deal to be a first author on a published manuscript. You can get by with some abstracts or posters but you will need some papers published to make a real impression on you CV. AMGs do not need much research.
  5. Make yourself “appear” special – even though most doctors are not (AMGs or FMGs). The easiest way to do this is through hard work, which could have a lot of different applications. Doctors are somewhat smart, but most work hard to get where they are. So, if you take the extra steps just by putting in the extra work (cardiology morning reports, going to cardiology conferences, looking at cases in the cath lab, etc), you can thus make yourself standout from the rest.

Last thing, if this is what you really want....Never, Ever, Ever, Ever Give Up! Will write more on the tpoic some other time.

11 comments:

  1. "Fall out of bed" and get into a cardiology fellowship.... That's a Big Fat Joke.
    I am an AMG, graduate of USC Med School, with good scores and good research. I matched into a Cardiology fellowship in California. But I busted my @$$ doing so. Nowhere along that path did I feel like I just "fell out of bed" into the fellowship program. For every ONE available fellowship spot in California, there are about 100 applicants, of which about 10 are interviewed and probably even fewer ranked. So it would be an understatement to call it a great achievement to match into a Cardiology Fellowship, to say the least.

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  2. I agree it is a great achievement. Maybe my comment was a bit too strong, but what I have seen on the East coast (where there are many programs), is that it is quite easy for AMGs to get into a fellowship, at least here in the East coast.

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  3. fuck u im in img and i raped the cardio interwiew nigga

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  6. I couldn't agree more with Dr. Tickoo about his recommendation to build connections with faculty in the cardiology department. Some applicants wait until they do a cardiology rotation or research elective well into their second year before forming these important relationships. If you know that your future is in cardiology, there's no reason to delay. As Dr. Tickoo wrote, think about how you can interact with key cardiology faculty even earlier. There are opportunities at cardiology morning report and cardiology conferences. Can you spend time in the cath lab? Can you arrange to read EKGs or echocardiograms with attendings? Are there any case reports or vignettes that you can write up with a cardiology attending? Frequent and varied interactions with cardiology faculty over a longer period of time demonstrates your commitment to the field and allows you to develop the strong relationships needed for cardiology match success.

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  7. cardiology fellowship is a good service. Through this, we can learn about a variety of topics heart. We will learn more about it, the more profit for us. We need to know in detail about the issues.

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  8. Thanks for providing some good information about cardiology fellowship.

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  9. I have read your blog.It is very informative.If we read this kind of blogs, we can learn a lot of about cardiology fellowship. Thanks again for providing such wonderful information about cardiology fellowships.

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  10. This is very useful information for Cardiology fellowship.Thanks for sharing this fantastic article with us.

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  11. You may know how hard is it to get a cardiology fellowship . And your article can give some advice about how to achieve this paper. It will be good to perform the best application papers such as the personal statement, letter of recommendation and some other types of papers. So you should keep high attention to the quality of these papers. And the best way to check their quality will be to hire the expert writing services that will show you how to create the quality application papers. So you should only tell them your terms and requirements and achieve the required assistance.

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