Many people do get into occ med without being residency/fellowship trained, it used to be easier to get board certified too, but unfortunately this is changing and more places prefer the board certified physician. Most people who do occ med will do the urgent care/ fitness for duty/ drug testing part of occ med if they are not residency trained. I see this even with the PM&R physicians who do occ med. More complicated cases that include IMEs, disability evaluations and environmental exposures will still go to the occmed physicians. Yes fellowships for occ med include another prev med specialty like aerospace, toxicology or undersea and hyperbaric medicine, sometimes acute pain.
A list of residencies/fellowships are listed on their website. Becoming an MRO and making agreements with a few local companies can help lead into an occ med practice, but more group practices are starting based on the combined PT/OT, Pain, Radiology and Physician practice model and then being bought out by larger hospital systems. MRO is becoming more National rather than local as well.
No occ med physicians currently do not manage htn/dm/HL often because it is a preventive medicine specialty so especially in the future more wellness/surveillance exams will be performed by the occ med doc staff which will follow prevention of these diseases and then referral to primary care if a disease presents itself. Occ Med is starting to add more wellness due to the problem with more and more non-communicable diseases that are causing lost work time rather than injuries alone.
Prev medicine in itself is a good residency, however, a majority of graduates will continue on to do an occ med residency or do occ med in their practice. Being dual boarded in occ med and prev med is not really necessary, but an initial occ med residency gives you more tools to develop a practice in the future.
Since occ med/prev med residencies include a public health degree and often at no cost, jobs with goverment and global health agencies go well with these residencies. I did an internship with the World Health Organization and the CDC/ATSDR during resideny so far and loved them.
Many Occ Med programs are funded by the NIOSH training grants, mine is funded by half GME/Medicare and half NIOSH which is a plus because it means that I was able to get the opportunity to rotate outside of my institution where as many residencies have more restraints. However, not all programs are funded by this grant, some are full GME and some are through a VA system or local businesses. NIOSH trainee grants are definitely still being funded for the next few years although there was a quesion about it earlier last year. Of course, this is the case for regular GME funding for all residency programs because they rely on the government working as well.
Hi folks,
Great forum goin here.
So I'm trained/BC in Family Medicine -- can I get into occmed without doing an occmed residency/fellowship? at the medical system I work at there are a few occmed physicians who are only FM or IM trained.
any advice on how I can get into the field?
also, based on the description of the field, is it accurate to say that Occmed physicians don't manage a pt's HTN/DM/HLD / chronic diseases? do you have a lot of issues with pain-med seeking pt's given that you deal with workplace injuries?
thanks