Originally Posted: 2001-10-28 15:02
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I think there is only one advantage of doing an internal medicine residency first and then doing psychiatry. You can probably get better training within each field by matching into the best residency you qualify for in each field. I know only one person who has done this in recent years (there may be others though). There is one very big risk with doing this - when you are approaching the end of your internal medicine residency there will be a VERY strong incentive not to spend another 3 years doing psychiatry. The amount of money you make is not too much different between internal medicine, psychiatry, or doing both (although I was able to get a higher salary because of being dual boarded). There is, however, a big difference between a resident salary and someone who is done with residency. Not only that, but your life will probably be better once you are done with residency (although not for everyone).

The biggest advantage to a combined residency over the others is that if you are at an established program, you will have peers with similar interests, and likely mentors who are familiar with both fields and the areas where they overlap. If you are fairly sure you want to do both, then I would suggest you look for a combined program. If you are not sure, you may be better off picking the one field you think you'd rather do and just do a residency in that field. Or, you can always do a combined residency and figure you have only lost 1 year of training and possibly a lot of extra aggravation, but you will not look back wondering if you should have done both.