Percent Change of U.S. Medical School Graduates Filling Residency Positions in Various Specialties

Hoover  10 Mar, 2007  Residency Training

20 Comments so far »

1. Cherokee said

   March 10 2007 @ 3:22 pm

   How dare people desire a 40-50 hour work week, decent pay, and an good lifestyle!

   Another GREAT perk during path training is no internship year! God have mercy on my soul. If I had to be an intern I would drop out. Yep, even just one year. Maybe I’d be a wuss, but it’s not worth it.

   Overall, path seems to be a great choice. I’ve met a lot of jerk attendings, but pathologists on balance are pretty cool. Perhaps because they know they escaped the HELL of rounding, doing H&P’s, and talking to live nasty patients! *shudder*

2. Panda Bear said

   March 10 2007 @ 4:55 pm

   I’m not surprised at the unpopularity of Family Medicine. It can be a “lifestyle” specialty but if you play it like that the pay is not worth the effort put into getting the board certification.

   On the other hand I have a friend in Family Medicine who essentially works 35 hours per week seeing people who are essentially not sick, refers anything disgusting or difficult, and makes enough to live a low-stress, comfortable life with plenty of hunting and fishing.

   One of the reasons a certain FP program that I will just call “Earl” went under is that they refused to take non-American IMGs.

3. Panda Bear said

   March 10 2007 @ 4:56 pm

   Answer: My friend works in Urgent Care.

4. Hoover said

   March 10 2007 @ 6:23 pm

   I’ve heard that Urgent Care can be very lucrative if you play your cards right. The hours aren’t bad, either.

5. Road Kill Ninja said

   March 11 2007 @ 12:18 pm

   Cherokee,

   I loved path during the 1st 2 years of school, but didn’t do any rotations during years 3&4. I love the amount of knowledge that the pathologists always seem to possess.

   I ended up applying to Anesthesiology and will hopefully match on Thursday. I think that I could be happy in this field, but I often wonder about pathology.

   It’s probably too late to do anything about it now, but what are the logistics of making the switch after intern year, esp. since I have no “clinical experience?”

6. Hoover said

   March 11 2007 @ 12:44 pm

   Cherokee can probably shed more light on this, but I wouldn’t think that switching into Pathology would be too hard for you. I’ve heard that quite a few people in path are those that made the switch from more intense specialties. It would be interesting to look at the percentage of residents that enter pathology after doing in an intern year in other specialties.

7. Road Kill Ninja said

   March 11 2007 @ 1:02 pm

   I’m in this all-encompassing abyss of not really being sure if I’ve made the right specialty choice. It sucks. Man, I don’t want to do an intern year if I’m just going to switch anyway. Love to hear your thoughts fellas.

8. Hoover said

   March 11 2007 @ 2:26 pm

   I hear ya man. I wouldn’t want to do one either. How confident are you that you are going to match this week? If you don’t end up matching you could always try and scramble into a pathology spot.

   If you do match Anesthesiology, I don’t know what the implications of backing out of the match contract would be. I’ve heard that it can make it difficult to match in the future, basically locking you into at least a year of Anesthesiology. But, I do know some people who essentially “quit” their residency this year, and seemed to have no problem switching into another field.

9. Parcho said

   March 11 2007 @ 6:15 pm

   I think I’d shoot myself if I had to spend most of my days looking into a microscope.

   More power to the path folks–but I couldn’t do it.

   Then again…I’m a medicine guy–we’re not too exciting either.

10. Road Kill Ninja said

    March 11 2007 @ 7:21 pm

    Hoover,

    I’ll match….Although I’m a DO, I’ve got USMLEs of 251/256 and think I’m not a total douchebag. I think the hell of medschool has been the way the clinical years are structured.

    I mean, you are forced into choosing a career after having exposure to very few medical specialties (and its often the crap ones like FM or Ob-Gyn). So how the F do I know if I like Path or Urology or Addiction Medicine for that matter.

    As I said earlier, I think I can be happy in Gas, there are definitely things that attracted me to it. But I’m a guy who likes knowledge of disease and it’s pathophysiology more than a lot of the other BS that happens day in & out in medicine. Seems like path could be a good fit.

    Great blog!!

11. Hoover said

    March 11 2007 @ 7:31 pm

    Parcho - It could definitely get old, just like looking at films all day in radiology. Not to mention the sedentary lifestyle would kill me…I like to move around.

    Road Kill Ninja - Thanks for the compliments man. You bring up a good point. The way medical school is structured with required rotations makes it difficult to explore a wide variety of specialties. Even in my fourth year, we had required rotations we had to complete. I think it would be best to allow complete flexibility of fourth year schedules, which would allow students to experience just about everything that they think they’ll like.

12. CobraCommander said

    March 12 2007 @ 8:47 pm

    Ninja,
    You won’t have any trouble matching into path with board scores like that, unless you break out a meth pipe and start smoking in the middle of your interview, or something. Those scores put you above the top 90% of applicants. You could probably swing an interview in just about anything.
    Relax: you already have academic credentials better than 9/10 applicants out there.

13. Hoover said

    March 12 2007 @ 9:59 pm

    Ditto what Cobra said. You’ve got the whole gamut of specialties at your disposal with those numbers. Pick a great specialty with lots of free time and enjoy life man. You’ve earned it. Even if you have to do a year of GAS and discover that it’s not really where you belong, it’s not the end of the world. You’ll match into Path next year and will do fine.

14. CobraCommander said

    March 13 2007 @ 6:53 pm

    Despite what some people think, it’s still in large part a numbers game (board scores and class rank.) There are always folks who have crummy grades and board scores but try to get ahead and match into competetive specialties by sucking up or doing suct work on some research project so they can get named as 15th author and can claim they’re “published.” It doesn’t work. During the clinical years, these guys turn into gunners with poor aim.

15. Road Kill Ninja said

    March 13 2007 @ 9:19 pm

    Thanks for the words fellas. I only posted my stats in response to Hoover asking if I’d thought I’d match in Gas. I did by the way.

    I’ve never really been worried about my “competitiveness,” I’ve been concerned that I have been rushed into a career decision that may or may not be right for me. Moreover, the only way I will find that out is after I’ve been immersed in it for a while (intern year). God I hope I truly love Gas, b/c it would suck to have to reapply/interview/match and go through the hell that is PGY1 first!!

16. Med School Hell » What Exactly Are the ROAD Specialties? said

    March 16 2007 @ 8:48 pm

    […] some more recent data on work hours before my argument can hold any weight. The students are still pouring into Anesthesiology as of […]

17. Med School Hell » 5 Reasons Why You Should Consider Pathology said

    March 17 2007 @ 12:36 pm

    […] Unfortunately, most medical schools don’t promote Pathology as much as they should. It’s not part of the core rotation curriculum during your junior year, and if you want to see what a pathologist actually does, you’ll need to set a block of time aside for an elective rotation as a senior student. Despite this, I do think that people are catching on. […]

18. Med School Hell » Working Smart In Medicine For Maximum Income Generation - Part 1 said

    March 19 2007 @ 11:20 pm

    […] people don’t like to “work more for less.” Could this be a reason for the decline in interest of the primary care specialties? Without a doubt it […]

19. redstorm said

    September 4 2007 @ 11:31 pm

    who said med school doesnt tout path.. what about the 6 months in 2nd year..

20. Hoover said

    September 5 2007 @ 1:30 pm

    Err, a required course in pathology during second year is nothing like a rotation in path. Therefore, path really does get the short end of the stick in terms of rotation exposure.

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