EM RESIDENT WANTING TO SWITCH INTO ORTHO

Hello all-
I am an EM resident at a highly competitive program who realized that emergency medicine is not for me. I find myself attracted to all orthopedic issues and miss the operating room. I am looking to switch into a PGY-1 ortho position (i.e.- i am expecting to re-do my intern year). I am willing and fully expecting to take a year or 2 off to do research, but obviously, a paid research position would be better than a non-paying one. Therefore, I have a few questions:

1) can anyone give me advice as to what I should do next (ie- contact pds, etc)?
2) has anyone else done this?
3) which programs have research positions (and match these people into their ortho programs)?

I appreciate the help and the input. Take care.

SM

Hello,

I don't want to give you a bad news, but I want to make sure that you know about the difficulties that you may encounter when you want to switch from a 3-year residency to a 5-year residency. I think you should not quit your EM residency before you find an Ortho program.

Right now, hospitals get paid from medicare to pay for the residencies. Once you enter a residency, like an ER one, medicare will register your name for a 3-year payment.

Now, you decided that you want to change your residency to a 5-year one. The medicare will not change the duration of payment for you. It means, after you passed a year in EM, a hospital could potentially get paid from medicare only for 2 more years for you.

If an Ortho program takes you, that program has to support you for the last 3 years of your residency out of its pocket, since medicare won't help them anymore.

Don't get disappointed, keep trying.

Check your messages, I sent you some detailed info. I switched from ER into Ortho. I also agree you shouldn't resign from your ER spot until you match into ortho.

try the harvard program

Diane M Sheehan [url=mailto]dsheehan@partners.org[/url]
and James H Herndon [url=mailto]jherndon@partners.org[/url]

Bump.

Anyone with thoughts or experiences with this...?

I wonder what came out of the original post