Other Routes to Orthopaedics

I have never heard of anything like this. Now, there are some fellowships in Ortho, like hand, where you can do a plastic surgery residency and then do a hand fellowship, but I don't think that is exactly what you are looking for.

Jalby,

Thanks for your response. I know that there are fellowships in various sub-specialties in ortho such as hand, foot and ankle, sports med. etc. My question is more along the lines of is there any other way of doing ortho aside from the regular 5 year program. For example, i know that many ortho programs have you do general surgery your first year, so would someone that does one year in a general surgery program be able to then get into an ortho program? Once again thanks for your help.

theoretically, yes, you could enter a pgy2 spot in ortho after a gsurg internship, if your internship met all the requirements an ortho intern must do (usually like 6 mo gsurg, 2-3 mo ortho, anesth, sicu, etc) but there are not a huge number of pgy2 spots opening up each year, so your chances are probably better if you apply to both but plan on starting over.
if you're asking if there's any way to accelerate the 4yrs of ortho you do after internship, i'm pretty sure there's not.

cheers.
firegirl

I am not sure if I understand your question or its purpose 100% either, but I will try to give an answer. If you want to be a true orthopaedic surgeon then the only way to do it currently is a five (or six) year orthopaedic residency training program. However, as Jalby already indicated, you can do a hand fellowship after completing either a full general surgery or plastic surgery residency. To my knowledge, you have to complete your residency to pursue this option. Also, neurosurgeons operate on the spine but again this assumes you have completed a neurosurgery residency which is longer and more painful than an orthopaedic one. I doubt that there is any shorter way to be a surgeon who practices orthopaedics (even if in these scenarios it is limited to a specific body area).

There is an option out of family practice to do a sports medicine fellowship and in some manner these individuals might be considered a nonoperative orthopaedist. I dont think this option is currently available to internal medicine residents, but I cant be absolute. To clarify, this sports medicine fellowship is not the same as the one completed by orthopaedic residents as it is not a surgical fellowship. I would imagine that in the right orthopaedic group practice, a sports trained family physician would function basically as a nonoperative orthopaedist and may even have the ability to assist a true orthopaedic surgeon in cases if they so desired. This would obviously depend on the dynamic of the group, but a lot of orthopods have PAs or NPs who assist in their surgeries, and in the "good ol days" of medicine I believe it was not completely uncommon for family practitioners to assist surgeons in cases.

I dont know if this is the kind of info you wanted, but I hope it is helpful.

I'm gonna chime in here too, although I don't really know what you're asking. The only way to become a board-certified orthopaedic surgeon is to complete a recognized orthopaedic surgery residency program, so that you can sit for Part one of the ABOS boards. Then you become elegible for part two. There is no such thing as an orthopaedic surgery fellowship for people to do after they finish another type of residency. There are some orthopaedic-related subspecialty fellowships that are available like the previous posters have mentioned. The most accessible one would be primary care sports medicine. You can pretty much do almost any type of clinical residency (peds, internal medicine, family practice, pm&r, EM) and apply for a primary care sports medicine fellowship. Like Orthooverhaul said though, this a non-operative and different from the sports fellowship that an orthopaedic surgeon would complete.

Thank you both for your responses. Without fully understanding my question you were both able to answer it!! I was asking about ohter routes to ortho because I am a student at a medical school in the caribean and of course we all know how tough it is for us to get into ortho residencies. I have another question for you, there are various ortho programs that allow FMGs to only do an observership and not an actual elective rotation. Do you guys think it would be worth to do one of these observerships at a program that I would like to apply to even though their policies clearly state that a student doing an observership cannot be involved in patient care?

Once again, thanks for your help.

I apologize in advance for my discouraging comment, but it can be difficult even for an american grad with a good application to get an interview and match at a program after a solid rotation in which they work tirelessly. It may be possible that an observorship could help, but it is definitely not probable that it will, and I personally doubt that it would increase your chances of matching in any significant way since it would be like a two step head start in a marathon race. This may be a harsh and bleak assessment on my part, but the applicant pool for ortho is so full of overqualified american grads that I dont think there is much incentive for programs to interview and match FMGs. There are rare exceptions to this rule and they would obviously be the people with whom to discuss the matter. If you want to become a board ceritified orthopaedic surgeon you most likely have a very long, arduous, and uncertain road. I hope my bluntness does not seem cruel. In the end this is just one person's opinion and I am simply trying to give a realistic view of what you may be up against. I wish you the best of luck.