Hi all,

It's been a long time since I participated with mommd- great to see it's still going strong.

I'm currently in a demanding fellowship program (pulm/critical care) and due to serious illness in the family from pulmonary and oncologic issues, I've considered leaving my fellowship program. I'm already done with my clinical pulmonary training, but am becoming less and less interested in critical care (which I'm doing right now). My disillusionment with it has significantly intensified, since my parent has been hospitalized for nearly a year now, has progressive cancer, and is ventilator-dependent. I really don't want to practice ICU medicine in the future.

The above experience has strongly shaped my feelings on the importance of having a balanced quality of life with work. I'm trying to sort out whether I'd be eligible to be certified in pulmonary medicine alone (if I didn't finish the critical care part,as my program is officially combined- no pulm track alone option), trying to stay in academics vs. private practice, even going back to doing regular internal medicine, or pursuing non-clinical medicine.

As for the latter, does anyone have any experience doing medical consulting they'd be willing to share?

I'm so sorry to hear about your very ill parent. My dad has been quite ill, too, and it has been all-consuming at times. I can imagine it would be very difficult to do any kind of a fellowship at that time, much less a fellowship in the exact field of his illness.

It sounds like you have plenty of options. I don't know anything about certification in pulmonary medicine, but surely the certifying organization would know whether you would be eligible at this point. Would not wanting to practice ICU medicine limit your options as a pulmonologist? It seems like a certain percentage of your patients would end up needing ICU care, and you would have to transfer care to someone else.

Hopefully some other members will know something about medical consulting or about your other options. I just want to wish you good luck and I hope your parent gets good care and is comfortable.

Sorry to post in this phsyician's only board, but my PM failed.

I am doing a sleep medicine rotation now -- one fellow is 35 y/o ex pulmonary /crit care doc with a 5 year old; and I bumped into a distinguished attending who taught me in ICU 8 years ago... now as a sleep fellow. It's a 1 year fellowship, they seem to work 40 hours or so a week, lots of reading time, slow clinic, and call is from home, only to come if something terrible happens in the SLEEP LAB. They are looking forward to specialized, helpful, nicely paid careers with family time.