Reddit reviews The Ultimate Guide to Choosing a Medical Specialty, Third Edition

I'm not sure if this will be helpful for you, but I really liked this book when I was completely lost. I have a feeling you may be past this point in trying to pick a specialty, but this may be a good place to get a better understanding of the field. If you don't have access to this book and want it, PM me and I'll send you a copy. Also check out this post with comprehensive spreadsheet that another student put together.. it is pretty amazing

 

One things I often tell underclassmen is that it is better to shoot for the "harder" specialty because you can switch over to the easier one if you change your mind. However, going the other way around is often impossible. So a lot of people start residency in general surgery and change their minds about it and switch to anesthesiology. This is very common and anesthesiology is a very welcoming field to people who've changed their minds after starting residency. I would say if you're really torn and on the fence about general surgery vs anesthesiology know that you could always go for anesthesia later. You probably will not be able to choose where you go location wise, but you won't be locked of out the specialty if you decide to go with gen surg first.

 

I actually matched into anesthesiology (current MS4). Obviously take everything I have to say with a grain of salt... but I think anesthesiology is a great specialty. I'm surprised that you've heard people complaining that their job could be done by midlevels. At my program (and on my interviews) I've honestly never met an anesthesiologist who didn't love their job. Perhaps the rotation site you're at just doesn't have the complexity of cases that are seen at other places. I think the biggest thing about anesthesiology is that you have to be ok with many cases being a standard routine. Everyone agrees that you can teach a monkey to intubate and turn on some gas, but being a physician really matters in those cases where things aren't routine. Being prepared for those critical/scary situations is what the training is really about. Also, the anesthesiologists I work with are always trying to perfect what they are doing in their usual routine. Often they are trying to tweak things so patients are as comfortable as possible when they wake up. Anyways, I will admit that anesthesiology isn't for everyone, but I wouldn't rule out the specialty because a few people you've met are unhappy. Anecdotally, I find that the field has really high job satisfaction compared to other specialties (among residents and attendings).

 

Also not sure if this is going to be a big deciding factor for you, but I know many well regarded MD anesthesiology residency programs are DO friendly. One program I interviewed at that I remember most clearly being very DO friendly is case western. In terms of competitiveness, I would say anesthesiology is relatively easy. You do not need to be top of your class to match into this field. Refer to the spreadsheet above for numbers on competitiveness. My personal experience is that I got interviews from many of the top programs without being very competitive (bottom half of my class for sure and nothing especially impressive on my application to compensate for it).
 


Best of luck to you!

The first holiday my wife was in school, I got her this book on choosing a medical specialty. The year she graduated, I got her a collection of papers that were specific to the specialty she matched into (her idea, not mine haha). When she started rotations, I got her an iPad--they weren't necessary for her rotations, but she got a lot out of it.

✨INTJ ✨interested in Cardiology or Palliative Care

I knew this sounded familiar. I came across The Ultimate Guide to Choosing a Medical Specialty by Brian Freeman, MD a couple of years ago and found this chart relating personality types and specialties: 1 and 2. Just something fun to look through!

This book is not too bad. Has a profile for each specialty, as well as specific advice. I picked up the old version cheap a while ago.

The AAMC Careers in Medicine page is actually pretty good too. You have to sign up and log in to see the material, but they go through lots of stats. A new version of Charting Outcomes from the Match will likely be published by the NRMP/AAMC this year or next, and will have valuable data regarding each specialty's competitiveness.

But as far as "playing the game" goes, it's a much simpler game than the med school admissions process was. You don't have to have extensive lists of extracurriculars, and a lot of it boils down to a few big things you need to do.

• Do well on Step 1, obviously
  
• Get lots of good grades in the clinical years
  
• Get involved in research
  
• Get good letters of rec, which usually results from doing well on rotations
  
• Getting inducted into AOA can be very helpful
  
  Those are really the biggest things, and it applies to virtually every specialty. The more competitive a specialty is, the more you will need to excel in each of those areas.

http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Choosing-Medical-Specialty-Edition/dp/0071790276

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