 So intern versus resident versus fellow, what in the world is the difference? So exactly we'll talk about in this episode. Let's get into it. All right guys, welcome to the MD Journey Channel, completely dedicated to helping you succeed on your medical journey but doing it with last dress. My name is Lakshman, I'm an internal medicine physician and resident in training. In today's video, we're gonna be talking about what the difference is between an intern, a resident and a fellow. There's a lot of semantics in medicine and just to make it more complicated, we also add these lingoes and terms to essentially where you are on your medical training and it gets really confusing, especially if you're somebody who hasn't started the rotations or hasn't started residency yet. So hopefully this video kind of helps clarify the different nuances of terms, which are honestly the same thing for saying a different phase in your doctor journey. So let's just start with an intern which basically means a first year resident. Now to clarify that even more, when you finish medical school and you go into residency, you have many different year spans. It can be anywhere from three years to up to seven years depending on the specialty that you choose. And the first year of your residency is called your intern year. Now, why does it call an intern year? I'm sure there's some history behind it that you guys can teach me, but really the most important part is one that can help differentiate somebody that's brand new as a physician who just graduated medical school to somebody who's at least been doing it for a year plus into their residency. The second thing is during your intern year, you may actually be practicing the medicine specialty that's a little bit different than what you ultimately end up doing. So for example, there are specialties like neurology, psychiatry, radiation, oncology, you name it that actually don't have a full kind of start to finish program where you're doing that specialty from the very start. So for example, if you're going into psychiatry, the way most programs are designed is you're not doing psychiatry from day one. In fact, you're usually recommended to do an internal medicine year that's called your intern year. If you're going into ophthalmology, you may be doing a year in surgery or a year in medicine. If you're doing dermatology, your first year is going to be likely in medicine or surgery. If you're doing radiation oncology, your first year surprise is not gonna be in radiation oncology, you may actually be doing a surgery year or again, doing an internal medicine year. Now, what's the reason for this? It may seem a little counterintuitive to say I wanna become a neurologist but the first year I have to be an internal medicine physician, that makes no sense. Well, if you think about it, you wanna make sure that all of your physicians are a little bit trained in basic medicine or basic surgery. So if you're gonna do a surgical field, while you may not be practicing your surgery field of choice, your first year, you'll at least start to get all the basics of surgery because there's gonna be skills that you're gonna take from that first year and use in your future career. The same thing, if you're a neurologist, while you may not be practicing every single style of medicine as a neurologist, it is important to know basic medicine. So when you take care of patients with strokes and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, that medicine knowledge definitely starts to apply for you there. And so that's another reason that we call it interns. One, it helps us indicate that they're a first year doctor but two, it also tells us that they may also be in a field that's not directly related to the field that they're doing that year. So to help differentiate somebody who is a first year internal medicine physician who's also going to go into internal medicine to somebody who is a first year internal medicine intern and is going to potentially go into dermatology, another term that we use to kind of differentiate them is called prelim or preliminary. Somebody who is doing a preliminary year in internal medicine but then is going into dermatology. So we would call you a prelim going into term. So that's again, another and more confusing nuance but hopefully that makes sense that an intern is a first year doctor. So that moves us to the second part of the episode which basically answers what in the world is a resident? Now thankfully, this is a little bit more simpler which basically means that a resident is anything that's not an intern. So if you have a seven year neurosurgery residency which is what you want to do in the future, that first year you'd be called a doctor and every year forward you'd be called a neurosurgery resident. And so not only does it say that you're not an intern so you're not a brand new doctor but also it gives you the ability to supervise those brand new baby doctors. So currently I'm a second year internal medicine resident as the making of this video. That means that there are going to be brand new doctors that haven't done a specific rotation and I'll be kind of their guidance or source of knowledge in case they have questions and hopefully I have the answers. And so basically from your second year of your residency all the way up to the graduation of whatever residency you're doing because they all have different links you're gonna be considered a resident. Those are all the classification specifically for your residency and so that moves us to the final part of this episode which is what in the world is a fellow? Now obviously we have our fellow good man but in this situation your fellow can be both man or a female and basically it means that after residency some people do additional training. So for example, after internal medicine residency you could go into a very specific field. You can choose I only wanna work with cancer patients. I only wanna work with really sick patients in the ICU. I only wanna work with cardiovascular or become a cardiologist. And so that requires a little bit more training. For example, a cardiology fellowship which is after residency is an extra three years. And so during those three years you're not called an intern, you're not called a resident, you're called a fellow. You're a first year cardiology fellow, a second year cardiology fellow, a third year cardiology fellow. Essentially every step along the way from that point on you're going to be a fellow. There are some people who do crazy things and do multiple fellowships in Stockholm. So you may do a cardiology fellowship and then let's just say you only wanna do procedures where you're placing stents in people. So you wanna be an interventional cardiologist. And so then you're going to be an interventional cardiology fellow. So that term fellow just means that you're beyond your residency. You have done all the basic training to be a medicine doctor or a surgeon but you're doing even more training for a specific kind of element in your respect to specialty. So to summarize an intern is basically a first year doctor. A resident is basically anything from your second year of residency all the way up to your graduation in your residency. And a fellow is anything that requires an extra fellowship and will continue with you until you are officially attending which means that you're no longer in training. You have a full-time job as an independent physician. There's nobody who's technically supervising you. And that is all the terms that you probably will need to know as a medical student as somebody interested in medicine or somebody in residency. So hopefully this episode was able to clear it up. The difference between the intern or resident and fellow. If you guys still have more questions let me know in the comment section down below. I'll be happy to answer them. But if you did enjoy this video definitely hit that like and subscribe button. And if you want more step-by-step advice for you on your medical journey whether you're a pre-med or a medical student in your clinical rotations or even if you're a resident and you want more help and guidance then definitely check out the Medellin Academy which is basically a platform designed for those of you that are on your path to becoming a doctor. If you guys are interested in checking it out if you use the link down below you'll actually get a full week access to the platform for just a dollar. But with that being said guys thank you so much for watching this video. Hopefully you enjoyed it. Let me know in the comment section down below what you guys think. And I will see you guys in the next one. Take care my friends. Peace.