Say goodbye to those. Has to be in your chief year now and good luck making that work if you're at a one a year program or even two a year.
Honestly doing an enfolded fellowship often completely defeats the purpose of a fellowship. Most people do fellowships to learn a new skill or see how others do things. Spending slightly more time with your mentor probably isnt going to teach you something you didnt learn from them after your first 300+ cases with them.
Is functional going to be the next big thing, even bigger than tumor?
I think this notion, for tumor (not functional), that if you didn't do a fellowship you shouldn't be doing them in practice is misguided. If you are a junior tumor attending that did a fancy fellowship in it then obviously that will be your opinion, as it should. And I doubt many community guys/gals are doing awake craniotomy or going for glory on nasty skull base tumors. But for cases like frontal lobe gliomas, most meningioma, some acoustics, there are certainly private practice guys doing these cases, and it is far more than 1-2 a year. The majority of private practice will be basic spine because that is the most in demand, and if they are efficient it maximizes their returns. But that absolutely does not mean that a good surgeon in private practice 'can't' take out a tumor. If a patient wants to do some research and then get on a plane and go to MD Anderson then they will. But if they don't want to uproot their lives and just have the tumor taken out by a reputable local surgeon, then they can do that too. For functional, its a huge startup cost to have the equipment, and it doesn't bill as much, so the private guys/gals have less incentive unless they actually just like it.
Please don't make people think that if you don't have a tumor fellowship you can't do brain tumors. Seven years of residency gets you ready for the basic stuff. Certainly some types of tumors are better treated in high volume academic centers, but there is no unofficial rule that private practice surgeons cant take on these cases too. Its all about personal comfort. There are some insanely skilled private practice surgeons too.
Soon spine fellowships will be mandatory to do spine