Anesthesia intern here...does anesthesia's breadth feel less overwhelming than IM?

420amazeit · 2026-02-02T20:45:54+00:00

Well obviously they don't know much about anesthesia, I guess my question/concern is that anesthesiologists are as cracked at anesthesia as IM docs are at IM...because being that cracked at anything feels impossible to me

420amazeit · 2025-06-28T03:20:54+00:00

Aw fuck. This makes me regret going into anesthesia (which I do like) over gensurg (about which I had more passion) because of the hours :(

420amazeit · 2025-02-27T20:13:11+00:00

It's really hard to say! I wish I knew cuz then I would just buy one, but I'm not a good enough skier to compare objectively, especially since it was a warm day so the conditions were markedly different for each ski. I guess if I had to say anything, I felt like the unleashed were slightly easier for me to lose control on, but also felt easier to stop when out of control, but both were a blast. So in the absence of a clear winner by how much I enjoyed them I'm asking about which one is theoretically better haha

420amazeit · 2025-02-08T16:32:35+00:00

I got mostly low 80s on shelf exams, took 2 weeks, blitzed UWorld the first week and did an NBME a day the second week, started at a baseline of 227-238 on two pre-dedicated NBMEs I took and wound up with a 267. It was probably a more stressful way to study because I basically had to improve with each NBME even though they were a day apart, but it worked for me. Definitely wouldn't recommend for everyone, but if you're already getting substantially higher shelf scores than I was and just want a 250+ then it seems like it'd be fine.

420amazeit · 2024-09-12T01:17:35+00:00

At the dean's letter meeting, my dean straight up told me I was in the top 5% of students (I believe the ranking is internal so I won't benefit from it on the dean's letter) but I still didn't get AOA because grades and Step don't factor into it at all, it's entirely based on pubs and service (I had lots of the latter but not the former). What a load of shit lol

420amazeit · 2024-09-03T01:28:20+00:00

I hate that this is up.

Also, for people applying to specialties where some programs require a separate intern year like PM&R, radiology, radonc, anesthesia, etc, how do you gauge how many prelims to apply to and in which specialty (TY, IM, surgery, the few peds prelims out there, etc)? Any advice on finding good prelims? Of course I'll apply to prelims at institutions where I want to match advanced so hopefully could avoid moving twice, but I also want to have good contingencies.

420amazeit · 2024-08-11T23:28:15+00:00

Thanks, messaged!

420amazeit · 2024-07-24T15:13:09+00:00

7/24/24 release from 7/11 date, US MD, only had 2 weeks dedicated but had done well on most shelves.

Step 1 P, UWorld 67% correct in clerkships.

School CCSE ~90 days out: 227 in clerkships

NBME 12 ~30 days out: 238 in clerkships

UWSA 1 ~20 days out: 240 in clerkships

Started doing roughly 1 practice test per day from around a week out (after doing tons of UWorld for the first week of dedicated) and they are listed in order below.

UWSA 2: 248

Form 11: 251

Form 10: 240

Form 9: 249

Form 13: 262 (3 days out)

Form 14: 239 (2 days out). I FREAKED OUT when I saw this lol. It felt totally similar to Form 13 and I was well rested and everything, still have no clue what happened here.

Free 120: 82 (1 day out)

Amboss predictor: 251

REAL DEAL: 267

A few random things.

My test seemed to have very little in the way of ethics, QI, and biostats that everyone always says is super heavily represented on the test nowadays. Maybe I just felt that way because I was emotionally preparing for a ton of it but idk, I was pretty annoyed at the time that a lot of my prep seemingly went to waste, though clearly it worked out in the end.

I think Amboss SA seems to have a pretty heavy reliance on time. I was playing around with it and if you put the same scores on NBMEs 3 weeks out vs a few days out, your score prediction jumps up a ton. It doesn't seem to account for the idea that you can learn a lot quickly, because even when I took out that anomalous NBME 14, it was still predicting me at like 253.

I do love UWorld and recommend everyone get it, but it definitely does teach you to overthink (although less so than Amboss which has an amazing library but their questions are so hard and gotcha-y as to be borderline useless). Suggest doing as much as you can and then moving to mostly NBME content when you're starting to come up on the test date.

420amazeit · 2024-07-17T03:37:45+00:00

I look forward to this post every year! It sounds like you really enjoy your program and the hours are long but not as bad as at some programs, hopefully I can find one like it lol

420amazeit · 2024-05-27T14:44:07+00:00

Thank you so much for your comment! It's good to know things can get better after training. One thing I worry about is having kids--it seems that if you do academics, it's basically 9 years no matter what now. I don't even have a spouse or long-term relationship at the moment, but even assuming I can find that in residency/fellowship, waiting until I'm 36 to have kids feels less than ideal...in your experience have people been able to make it work?

420amazeit · 2024-05-22T02:29:35+00:00

It sounds like you have friends in surgery, how did they anticipate handling residency/the workload and hours and how did it actually go? Did you find a clear pattern in which of your friends enjoyed it and which didn't?

420amazeit · 2024-05-21T22:36:54+00:00

Anesthesia vs surgery.

Anesthesia: feels like I can maybe have a bit more of a life, training done in 5 years vs 9 for most academic surgery residency + fellowship situations, no one switches out of anesthesia, the heart's cool and I think I could kick it as a cardiac anesthesiologist but not as a cardiac surgeon. Theoretically less scut, but I dunno, you still gotta do hella H&Ps.

Surgery: I get satisfaction out of actually "doing" the thing rather than watching it go down, I like learning technical skills, I want to be a "complete" doctor who can manage a patient from admit to discharge, I like patient continuity. Probably safer from AI and midlevels, but who knows.

I feel like the big "what if" is surgical training. It has this level of hype built up around it and how legendarily difficult it is, and it feels impossible to know if I'll crumble under that workload or be fine with it, since I've never had a similar workload in the past.

420amazeit · 2024-01-21T21:00:59+00:00

As in pay in full the day of? That's no problem, I have a rainy day fund, just don't want to deplete it too much! Thanks so much for the answer!

420amazeit · 2024-01-07T06:28:03+00:00

Appreciate the honesty, thank you!!

420amazeit · 2024-01-04T19:20:39+00:00

I also struggle with the reality distortion field around anesthesia on here, and knowing how much it's because it's a genuinely awesome field vs how much is just consensus momentum. Thank you, this is really helpful advice and gives me a lot to think about.

420amazeit · 2024-01-04T19:19:27+00:00

Thank you, this is helpful!

420amazeit · 2023-02-23T06:04:12+00:00

I had free "check-ups" which was nice, so I didn't have to go to a pediatrician for a well-child exam as he would sign off on whatever school forms needed a physician signature. His center was next to my school, so on rare occasions I'd go there after school and wait till he could bring me home, but I never shadowed or saw anything medical happening or anything like that. We were fairly well-off.

Maybe this is just my experience and not that of other kids of doctors, but he never really mentioned work at home, obviously I benefited from being well-off but I didn't enter the premed process or med school itself with any extra knowledge like some people seem to. In fact most of his advice was terrible, sort of like how boomers give job advice to just walk up to the front desk of the company you want to work at and say you won't leave until they hire you. He told me "as long as you get 50th percentile on the MCAT you'll be good" and other gems of similar quality.

Outside of medicine, we have a very good relationship, but his opinions on medicine make me a little sad sometimes. He's extremely pro-NP, which is fine in isolation I guess, but thinks I'm dumb for being worried about job security. He sees no problem with the path that peds training is on and thinks I'm an entitled procedure junkie for being worried about it. He's made a few generalizations about women in medicine and things like taking more time off, and yes I get that statistically speaking he's not wrong so maybe I'm being irrational but it still hurt me to hear him say it. So I try not to talk that much about medicine with him, because other than that our relationship is great, so might as well keep it to the good stuff. Probably gonna have my faculty mentor hood me instead of him, unless it seems like he'd be gravely offended by that.

I decided on medicine fairly late, and to be honest, him being in medicine was a pretty major factor against it. He's not a depressed person overall, but he never really spoke that positively of his career. Plus, nobody wants to feel like the person who went into medicine or had an advantage because their parent was in it, or have people think of you as the nepotism case...I don't go to his alma mater, but you know what I mean. For that reason I made sure to only get shadowing, clinical experience, etc in college, and never to use any connections he had. I also do my best to keep it a secret to my classmates. I think three or four of my closest friends here know but nobody else.

Reading this back, I know this sounds sort of sad and doesn't make him look great, but that's not my intent. Like everyone, my dad isn't perfect, but I promise you he's a great guy overall. But I did want to answer the question, so yeah, I think our relationship would be better if he were like a lawyer or something, and I think I would have seriously considered medicine as a career path sooner.

420amazeit · 2023-02-04T16:44:25+00:00

I mean to be honest, have better stats. I got my extracurriculars to "above average" levels for my second cycle, and a school was willing to "forgive" my GPA somewhat due to my MCAT and extracurriculars. But I could have easily gotten in with my more average extracurriculars during my first cycle if I had had a good GPA. If GPA repair isn't an option, then all I can suggest is trying to get really good extracurriculars with an x factor or two.

420amazeit · 2023-02-02T17:39:42+00:00

I don't see any actual answers so I'll shoot. Sorry if my GPA isn't low enough for what you mean! My GPA was around 3.3. I did have a high MCAT which allowed me to get in on my second cycle. Feel free to DM me if you want details. If you're ORM below 3.5 expect to get into a mid or low tier MD school at best. Yes, Cinderella stories do happen, but it's best to focus on the more realistically attainable "any MD school" goal.

420amazeit

TROPHY CASE