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critical care job vs EM residency


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Hi all,

New grad considering the pros and cons of accepting an emergency medicine residency vs critical care job.  Residency is a year and they try hard to hire you directly from the program making $120,000.  Downside is that residency pay is half that.   Critical care job would presumably offer the best training if I were try to eventually return to emergency medicine somewhere down the road, and per staff offer a great learning experience for new grads.  Salary still being negotiated, but north of 100K.  Thoughts?  

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critical care overlaps with EM, but if you want to do EM, do an EM residency. you won't learn about reductions, routine workups, etc in critical care, you will learn about managing the sickest 5% of patients only. A good skill set to be sure, but that misses 95% of em. 

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Agree with above. I've worked in CC since graduation 4yrs ago, have convos with my wife over breakfast (she's an ED PA) and am blown away by the complaints she addresses WITHOUT a $5k workup and every single bit of information possible. Plus she's real smart and stuff. And her skill set is much more transferrable to other arenas of medicine and life.

While I can suture in an art line, trialysis cath or CVC in a heartbeat trying to do a running suture on my puffy jacket the other day almost broke me.

I'd take the residency unless you truly want the crit care aspect of things. You'll learn more and get the best exposure to what sounds like the field you really want. As long as it's a reputable residency and not a cheap labor scheme.

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If it’s a good EM residency, you will do critical care procedural training and rotations. I’ve put in twenty centrals lines, several art lines, dozens of intubation, and a Swan-ganz in the last year in EM residency. You should be able to go into CC from residency and hit the ground running, not that there wouldn’t be plenty to learn.

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  • 1 month later...

I did an EM residency, worked another year in EM after that and now moving into critical care. During residency I did rotate through the majority of the ICU’s and had tons of exposure. Ultimately you have to do what feels right to you. Either option is good but only you can determine which is best.


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