<p>Can someone explain to me what residency is? I know it is what you do after medical school, but does everyone get in? Do most people do their residency at a different school than their medical school? If your grades from medical school aren't high enough, can you not get into residency, and then not be able to become a doctor? It takes 3-7 years, so what determines how long? If you want to specialize in something, do you do your residency after those extra years of specializing stuff, and would you have to spend more residency time?</p>
<p>Residency is done in a hospital not in a school. If you want to specialize in something that is extra complex like surgery, you will have to do additional work (called a fellowship) following your residency.</p>
<p>The number of years you spend doing your residency is determined by which area you are going into. Some specialties are longer than others (ie. Surgery I believe has one of the longest residencies) With the fellowships, those are for the sub-specialties. For example, if you wanted to be a forensic pathologist, you would first complete a 5(?) year residency in Anatomical and Clinical Pathology, and then do a fellowship in Forensic Pathology. (I'm using pathology as an example because this is an area I'm interested in)</p>
<p>If your grades are high enough to graduate from medical school, but on the lower side, I think you will still get matched with a residency, but it may not be one of your top choices (depends on what your top choices are.)</p>
<p>I'll give you an example of neurosurg or cardiothoracic surg (hear surgery). For neurosurg it is now a simple residency, you do 1 year internship, then anywhere from 4-8 years extra specializing. For cardiothoracic you do 5 years gen surg, then you do 3-4 years or more specializing in cardiothoraic surg. In general surgery position are harder to get into.
For neurosurg the job satisfaction is low during residency, and many leave after their first few years in residency due to the absolutely insane workload.
Any surgery will REQUIRE that you spend at least 80 hours a week working, and most residents will spend more preparing or will stay longer to finish things, so take on about 20 hours there. These extra hours of course are not "officialy" clocked and hospitals can and do get in trouble for residents staying over their 80 hour max.
To get the gen surg spots, you do need to usually have fairly high USMLE score, and good recs from your med school. You also need some research for neurosurg.</p>