2024 ACR and ARP Masters
Fellows and masters, members at different stages in their careers, are both important to rheumatology. During the year I co-chaired the Membership and Awards Committee with ARP President Adam Goode , PT, DPT, PhD, I gained an even greater appreciation of the essential roles that fellows and masters both play in shaping our specialty, as well as how the ACR and ARP support and recognize these important contributors to rheumatology.
Fellows—the Future
Training one fellow benefits thousands of patients. Fellows become the rheumatologists who will join our practices, who will serve patient populations who have never had access to a trained specialist, who will discover the next critical pathway involved in disease pathogenesis and who will design the trial leading to treatments that improve or hopefully cure disease. In every aspect of rheumatology, fellows represent the essential link to our future. The ACR offers many resources for fellows, including educational activities, volunteer opportunities, meeting scholarships, tips on preparing for the boards and career planning. Through these initiatives the ACR is here to support fellows during their training and throughout their entire career.
Fellow Education
The ACR Committee on Training offers programs that enhance rheumatology education. The Virtual Rheumatology Program for Fellows in Training (V-FIT) consists of the Virtual Rheumatology Teaching Lessons (ViRL), which cover a range of rheumatology topics, and the Virtual Rheumatology Practicum (ViP), a lecture series for first-year fellows in adult and pediatric rheumatology. The Rheum4Science modules focus on immunology integral to the pathophysiology of rheumatic diseases and drug mechanisms of action, as well as clinical research methodology necessary for the knowledgeable practice of rheumatology.
Fellows & Professional Meetings
Educational programs for fellows are offered at the ACR’s State-of-the-Art (SOTA) Clinical Symposium and ACR Convergence. The ACR offers scholarships to attend these and other ACR professional meetings. Scholarship applications have deadlines and individual requirements, including that scholarship candidates must be active ACR transitional members through the date of the meeting.
Rheumatology fellows from Yale School of Medicine, Knowledge Bowl champions at ACR Convergence 2024. (Click to enlarge.)
Increasing Fellowship Positions
One ACR goal for fellows is to train more of them. Pediatric rheumatology: Families who have a child with a rheumatic illness may have to travel long distances for their child to receive care. Pediatric fellowship programs are not filling, and we are working on strategies to change this. Adult rheumatology: We are facing a workforce shortage in which the need for care will outpace the number of practitioners. The ACR and ARP are seeking to address this in a number of ways. More residents are pursuing an adult rheumatology training position than there are funded slots in established programs.
