How to become a infectious disease specialist?
The above poster is mostly correct – 4 years of undergraduate education in biology, chemistry, math, and physics, 4 years of medical school (2 years classroom, 2 years clinical training), 3 years of an internal medicine residency However, infectious disease fellowships vary widely – to be employable, fellows often extend their two year fellowship to either 3 or 4 years so they can do a significant amount of research as a fellow (especially if the fellowship program is at a large, University based hospital). By doing this, you have a much better chance at working as a staff infectious disease physician (seeing patients in the hospital) versus running an HIV/AIDS clinic or going into tropical medicine or the like.
