i actually kind of think people forget that the diagnostics fellowship is a fellowship. it's a training program. the show makes a big fuss about house "needing a team," about how it's a "team," but.
the path to being a doctor is:
normal university education, either as a pre-med or some other degree. typically four years. there are ways to skip this step and go straight to med school, particularly in other countries -- chase's age-to-specialty ratio is often handwaved with this -- but it's Very Unusual and as far as we're aware, none of the characters have done so: we know house, wilson, cuddy, and foreman did not.
four years of medical school, complete with licensing exams. masters, when we meet her, is in her final year of med school.
after med school, you start specialty training. masters is a good example here, as the show spends some time on her trying to decide what she wants that specialty to be. house goes so far as to create an internship spot in diagnostics for her, but she is also interested in surgery.
an intern is a first-year resident.
the length of your residency will vary depending on specialty. park, when we meet her, is a neurology resident; she hasn't quite completed her training yet, and is only shunted off to house due to her unusual (read: she was assaulted by her boss) circumstances.
once you complete your residency, you're done! you're a real doctor with a real specialty and can go forth and do doctor stuff! HOWEVER:
if you want additional training or specialization, you might sign up for a fellowship program. you already have a specialty, but you wanna really hone in. say you're a pediatrician, but you want to specifically learn how to treat kidney ailments in the young. fellowship!
to use cameron as an example: she completed university, and then med school. her residency was in internal medicine, at which point she was a Real Doctor, but she then would have taken a two year fellowship program to specialize as an immunologist. all before joining up with house.
Princeton-Plainsboro is very specifically a teaching hospital, meaning that it is a place filled to the brim with students of all levels, undertaking all this training.
off the bat, there is no such thing as a "diagnostics" subspecialty. of course diagnostics is a thing in medicine, there are diagnostic textbooks and guides, it's just not a specialty in itself. everyone is, in theory, supposed to be able to do this. the show lampshades this here and there and admits it's more or less a field created by house, for house.
in season one, house mentions that his department is a two year program; you finish your training and move on. obviously this didn't quite pan out. it seems like the show quietly bumped this up to three years by season three (there are interviews justifying the mass exodus of human error with "it's a training program and they all should have been moving on anyway"), although even then, chase had been there for four years by the time he was fired, so... house does still reference it as a temporary program, though. at least in early seasons. it's not supposed to be your career in itself.
the pay is bad!! characters reference this multiple times!! the average 2025 pay for a fellowship salary is $48k, or about $23 an hour. that is not a lot. you can live off it but you are not rolling in money, and we know that house's fellowship doesn't pay a lot as it is brought up repeatedly that everyone is broke as shit. this is a training program. you're not in it for the money.
it is pretty strongly stated that if you graduate house's fellowship, you have a blank check to work anywhere you want: it's incredibly prestigious. we see cameron almost immediately becomes a department head; in s8 treiber complains that chase wasted his life and could have gone anywhere he wanted and been wildly successful after house's program; foreman, when he briefly leaves, is given his own department and offered another. this is probably one of the reasons so many people apply and will fight to get into the program: house really does churn out incredibly skilled doctors.
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