<p>I understand specialties are chosen around the third year of med school which is quite a ways off for me but still I'd like to get an idea...</p>
<p>What do you guys think of these specialties: dermatology, OB-GYN</p>
<p>It's all where your interests lie. Are you in med school? If not, you will have plenty of time to decide after you rotate through different areas. Sometimes one will think specialty X is definately what they want until they get into something else that really grabs their interest. Don't worry about it now---just make sure you get exposure to all areas you think you may have interest.</p>
<p>Dermatology is one of the most competitive specialties out there. If this is what you want to do, you'll need to be the best in everything from the very start!</p>
<p>(I should note that it is good advice to always be the best in everything. That way, should you decide that you prefer a less competitive speciality later on, you will have your choice of residencies)</p>
<p>OB-GYN is not as competitive I believe because of the skyrocketing malpractice costs. But I imagine it must be a very fulfilling and rewarding field to enter!</p>
<p>I understand surgery is competitive, but why is dermatology? Is it because its well paid?</p>
<p>I would imagine that Derm is competitive because of the quality of life you are allowed---no call, regular office hours (at least in private practice). Also, I'm not sure but the number of slots available for residencies could be less than some other fields.</p>
<p>Derm is competitive because essentially, it is a 9-5 job. The pay is not as high as some of the other fields, but if you break it down by how much you get per hour, it is still among the highest rates. And finally, mkm nailed it by stating that there a lot of applicants and only 100 or so positions in the country. Surprisingly, it might be one of the toughest residencies to obtain!</p>
<p>My sister-in-law is a dermatologist & LOVES it. She works part-time--only MWF & has a life with call only one day every 6 weeks. She doesn't do much of the "vanity" derm like botox injections, tho some make a lot of $$$ doing it.
My brother is an ophthamologist & LOVES it as well. He doesn't seem to ahve call too much either since he works at Kaiser & they share it among all the docs in the department. My brother-in-law is a urologist & seems happy enough with his field as well, tho he has more emergencies & call (in private practice on his own).
OB/GYN can be tough on a family life, especially if babies continue to want to be born at inconvenient hours. It's a rewarding field tho--generally haven't heard of kids of OBs wanting to become OBs themselves, tho there are a few.
A friend was going to be an OB/GYN & then switched to family practice & is happy with the switch (lives in rural MN). Allergists also don't have too much call & have considerable overlap with derm.
I agree it's good to do your best so you have lots of options. I'm sure as you continue in med school, you will find your field & KNOW it's right.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot!</p>
<p>So if there's only around 100 derm positions, that means like 1 or 2 per med school right?</p>
<p>I think it's probably closer to 4-5. Not every med school has a derm department!</p>
<p>What I've heard is that if your med school has a home derm department, you are starting off with a slight edge because you can build connections, ask for research, shadow the attending, etc... etc...</p>
<p>Of course, I wouldn't recommend picking a school solely for that reason as your desired specialty will probably change a thousand times before you finally pick one!</p>
<p>"I understand surgery is competitive, but why is dermatology? Is it because its well paid?"</p>
<p>Surgery is not competitive. Anyone can do a general surgery residency. It only becomes competitive if you want to specialize (neurosurgery, cardio, plastic, orthopedic, etc.).</p>
<p>Derm is competitive because it is a "lifestyle" job (low work hours).</p>
<p>Surgery isnt competitive? HAAHAHAAHAHAAHHA. K im done, it is competitive there are many people who want to do it who never get placed into programs and have to do one intro year and try again, or hope they get taken for the rest of the program. Gen surg residency is no walk in the park, thats for sure. And the specialities you mention with a few exceptions require doing gen surg first to get into the fellowship.</p>
<p>Sorry but you are just plain wrong. General surgery is one of the easiest residencies to obtain and requires much lower USMLE scores than these other specialities such as derm. Not to say it is an easy residency to do. It is of course one of the most stressful and rather long also.</p>
<p>Yes, you do need general surgery first before the surgical specialties. And these specialites are much harder to get into than general surgery. Kind of like how IM is easy to get into but the cardiology fellowship is not.</p>
<p>Perhaps in the past, not this year.</p>
<p>While I will agree that general surgery isn't as competitive as something like derm, the degree of difficulty increased greatly this year.</p>
<p>Only 1 spot in the entire nation was left unmatched. You can imagine how quickly it was filled.</p>
<p>The 80 hour work week restriction may have had something to do with this. It is definitely NOT one of the easiest residencies to obtain.</p>
<p>(Just as an FYI, neurosurgery and orthopedic surgery are separate residency programs. You do not go through a general surgery residency and the proceed to those programs. You must apply straight out of med school to a neuro or ortho surgery residency)</p>
<p>Neoanderz, show me your proof and Ill show you mine. It is one of the harder ones, not the hardest, but it is not easy. Not everyone who wants to do it gets matched. If there are spots left its because the match didn't work out for that program, not because everyone in the country who wanted to do gen surg got a spot.</p>
<p>I wasn't meaning to say that it is THE easiest but my point is that it is not hard to get into gen. surgery relatively speaking. If the game has changed up this year then I could be wrong, but I don't think it has changed that much. My roommate right now is an M.D. searching for residency and I have heard all about the let downs he has had in this whole process. Basically he tells me that he will probably wind up doing IM, but that he is pretty sure he could match for gen. surgery if he wanted even though his scores aren't that great. As for proof, I would love to see a ranking of all the residencies in order of competitiveness but I have no clue if there is such a thing. A quick google search yields "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USMLE_Step_1">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USMLE_Step_1</a>" which has "general surgery" listed under "Relatively easy to obtain" which is the lowest category.</p>
<p>Also, here's something straight from the American College of Surgeons website: "Each year there are more surgical residency positions offered than there are students waiting to apply."</p>
<p>Yea there are more spots. There is a difference between spots though. There are two types of Gen. Surg residencies out of med school. In basic terms a "normal" one, and one thats "temporary". The "normal" one is 5 years. The "temporary" is basically you do 1 year then they consider you for a normal one. Sometimes they let you count the year towards the normal one, other times you start from sratch and in essence end up doing 6 years. Guess which ones aren't usually filled up, but still kinda filled up?
The truth is most websites include both "normal" and "temporary" not just "normal." They make it look easy that way if you just count the "normal" spots they many many people who want to do not get in and sometimes they gamble with the "temp" spot. Others change what they want to do.</p>
<p>See the NRMP site <a href="http://www.nrmp.org/res_match/index.html:%5B/url%5D">http://www.nrmp.org/res_match/index.html:</a>
[quote]
There are four categories of programs participating in the Match:</p>
<p>Categorical - programs that begin in the PGY-1 year and provide the training required for board certification in medical specialties.
Advanced - programs that begin in the PGY-2 year after a year of prerequisite training.
Preliminary - one-year programs beginning in the PGY-1 year that provide prerequisite training for advanced programs.
Physician - programs that are reserved for physicians who have had prior graduate medical education. Physician programs are not available to senior U.S. medical students.
[/quote]
The preliminary surgery residency PGY-1 positions, formerly known as surgery internships, are filled by two categories of candidates: those who have secured an advanced residency position which requires a PGY-1 year in medicine or surgery (e.g., anesthesiology, radiology or ophthalmology) and those who have not.</p>
<p>And lots of those people in the prelim spots are trying to get cat. gen surg. spots. Lots of these prelims are empty because if people don't have something secured they don't want to take the risk, so they pick a diff speciality but it ends up looking like tons of empty spots.</p>