Family Medicine doctors can do fellowships too

Many medical specialties do fellowships to further sub-specialize their training often leading to increased compensation packages.  Sometimes there is just an extra sense of satisfaction becoming an expert leader in a niche field.  Did you know that Family Medicine can sub-specialize too?

Here’s a list of fellowships open to Family Medicine physicians:

  • Addiction Medicine
  • Adolescent Medicine
  • Behavioral Medicine
  • Community Medicine
  • Dermatology
  • Emergency Medicine
  • Faculty Development
  • Geriatrics
  • Health Policy
  • HIV / AIDS
  • Hospice and Palliative Care
  • Hospitalist
  • Integrative Medicine
  • Intensive Care
  • International
  • Medical Communications
  • Medical Humanities
  • Neuromuscular
  • Obstetrics
  • Preventive Medicine
  • Radiology Utilization Management
  • Reproductive Health & Advocacy
  • Research
  • Rural Medicine
  • Sports Medicine
  • Substance Abuse
  • Urgent Care
  • Women’s Health

Pretty long, eh?

I thought Medical Communications and Medical Humanities were pretty interesting.  Medical communications acknowledges that social media, blogging, and the like are an important part in Health and Patient Education.  It also trains you in medical writing and editing of top journals in primary care.  Medical Humanities touches upon the arts in medicine such as a way to heal through art therapy and to redesign medical spaces or applications.  Both of these incorporate a significant amount of time to learning, teaching, and keeping up with your clinical skills

The American Academy of Family Physicians keeps a website of current fellowship opportunities.  For the complete list with ability to search by topic, click on the link below.

https://nf.aafp.org/FellowshipDirectory/search

 

Pin It

7 thoughts on “Family Medicine doctors can do fellowships too

    • I can’t believe I forgot Sports Medicine as a fellowship option. Thanks for catching that error! It is now added.

      As for accreditation, all of these fellowships are offered at accredited programs/schools. Though the fellowship itself may or may not be ACGME accredited. But some satisfy requirements for board certification/certificate of added qualifications while others are merely extra experience for the post-graduate resident. IE:

      Emergency Medicine fellowships can lead to Board Certification in Emergency Medicine.
      Fellowships in Adolescent Medicine, Geriatrics, Hospice & Palliative Medicine, Sleep Medicine, and Sports Medicine can lead to a Certificate of Added Qualification.
      The fellowships in leadership or health policy can lead to other degrees such as MPH, PhD, etc.

  1. How much does the pay scale vary for FP’s who have taken on a fellowship? I.e. if a physician was to take on a Dermatology fellowship would they then be able to practice solely as a Dermatologist and adopt their salary, or would they merely use this qualification as a special interest field within their current practice and perform a few extra procedures in their office without seeing a drastic change in their salary?

  2. Hi Justin,

    The answer is a little complex because there are many variables that go into how much you get paid per procedure, per insurer. Whenever you do more procedures, the reimbursement is greater. Having extra dermatology training will give you the credibility and experience to load your schedule with more procedural type visits and thus increase your salary in that respect. Or you could open your own practice creating a niche of for yourself of just dermatology.

  3. Hi everyone, I want to know if there is any cardiology fellowship program that can accept Family Medicine residents. Thank you

    • You can specialize in more than one specialty. Just take in to account the time it takes to do so and return of investment for it. I know doctors who did 4 years of an obgyn residency and then decided to do family medicine instead so they did 3 years more of residency. I also know of doctors who did the opposite – do family medicine residency then do an obgyn residency.

Leave a Reply