Hello everyone. I am in the middle of applying for SCC/ACS fellowships. I am going to work in an academic system and want to pursue the two-year path. What are your thought on doing a single 2-year ACS fellowship vs doing a 1-year SCC fellowship followed by a 1-year trauma/ACS fellowship? Are there any benefits to doing one over the other (besides not having to move again)? Are the 1-year trauma/ACS fellowships difficult to get? I am mostly planning for a 2-year ACS fellowship but one of the strongest programs I've seen for pure critical care experience is a nonoperative 1-year SCC program. Now I am wondering if it would be better to do that for a year then go to another program for a trauma/ACS year. Thanks for any advice.
Here's my opinion as an academic acute care surgeon.
I personally think that most people do not need the 2nd ACS year. If you had good general surgeon training and feel comfortable doing trauma you will be able to successfully practice at 95% of hospitals in the US as an acute care surgeon with just the 1 SCC fellowship year. There are only a handful of hospitals (maybe 20ish) that you really need the 2nd ACS year (again my opinion) such as Houston, Denver, Emory, DMC, etc...
I also don't think the 2nd ACS year helps make you a better academic surgeon if that is your ultimate goal to become NIH/AHRQ/PCORI funded in trauma critical care. For example, I am both NIH and AHRQ funded in trauma and only did the 1 year SCC fellowship. Honestly, if your going to do a 2nd year it may be better to do a research year and get an MS, MPH or MHI from one of the bigger academic research programs (again just my opinion).
If you are going to do the 2 year, the programs themselves are very heterogenous. Some programs are very heavy on trauma/ACS (Houston, Emory, Denver) and others on critical care (Michigan, Minnesota, Penn). There are some hybrid programs that are good in both though (Pitt, Maryland, etc). I would think that it would be best to do 1 year of SCC at a top critical care program (best probably being Michigan) and then 1 year of ACS at a top trauma program (best probably being Houston).
Again this is totally just my opinion, feel free to fully disregard, just trying to help as I remember being in your shoes...