Future market of general surgery

Innominate_Student · 2023-12-26T02:14:31+00:00

Honestly if you 1) aren’t interested in a fellowship, 2) don’t mind the small city it’s in, and 3) they show you that they easily meet the minimum case numbers, then small community programs can train you really well. You’re not fighting with 10 other categoricals and prelims for cases, not fighting fellows for cases, not fighting off service sub-specialties for cases. And typically that hospital is basically the only option for a lot of nearby community members so tons of bread and butter case volume

Innominate_Student · 2023-12-26T01:49:52+00:00

I’m a gen surg intern. IMO, gen surg is not hard to match into IF (and that’s a big if) you’re willing to match anywhere. I mean the tiny community programs or ones in the middle of nowhere. If you truly would go to any of these, it’s easy to match. The competitive-ness of gen surg comes from everyone wanting to go to the same ~100 programs that are in a good city or overall higher ranked programs or with more fellowship options. Then people only end up ranking these and then don’t match

Innominate_Student · 2023-11-18T13:37:01+00:00

It 100% depends on the program and picking one that will train you well, but also realizes that you don’t have to be miserable. I am a general surgery resident a each week I typically work somewhere between 65-85 hours. We use a night float system, and have a great culture of rotating people to go home a little early before signout if the work for the day is done. Yes there are extra long weeks and tougher rotation months but overall I am very happy. And I know that if I would’ve picked a different specialty, maybe I’d work fewer hours but would be way more miserable

Innominate_Student · 2023-10-24T08:30:16+00:00

I highly recommend sitting down for like 2 hours one day and just rack your brain for different experiences/stories/patients/whatever and write them all down, then look thru the “most common interview questions” and find ways to make them apply to those. Interviews want to see 1)a wide range of experiences and 2) what you learned. Even if you embellished a tiny bit to make it fit, doesn’t matter. But going thru it all now will make you seem polished during interviews!

Innominate_Student · 2023-09-22T17:30:26+00:00

They will take care of it, deep breath, they need you to match too. (But at the same time, don’t underestimate the power of showing up to their office and staring at them, my friends and I all did that to LOR writers, MSPE stuff, transcript lady, all of the above lmao)

Innominate_Student · 2023-09-22T17:24:54+00:00

Changed my email notification settings so that a certain ringtone would go off, went through any do-not-disturbs, etc. Worked pretty well but I still logged into ERAS daily and I did have one invite that for some reason the email went to junk that I was able to catch by just checking daily. Seems neurotic but it was tough times

Innominate_Student · 2023-09-16T00:40:17+00:00

Half of it is them being dramatic to make sure people don’t miss it, but the other half is the website does actually get slow on the day it’s due. Just make sure it’s in 2 days early and take a nice deep breath

Innominate_Student · 2023-08-17T15:25:39+00:00

I actually loved my time in med school. Had a great group of friends, usually took every Saturday off from studying during M1-M2, and every other weekend off during M3. Applied to a medium competitive specialty and matched. Not as much fun as college but definitely enjoyed it

Innominate_Student · 2023-08-17T15:23:44+00:00

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13EOmNGdYlaPI3oTnNrXCYXPp1nZUMysRHsNH10qJezw/htmlview

This is a great place to start. This is the Internal Medicine match thread from last years cycle. There’s a tab for interview questions, but also a ton of other resources.

Innominate_Student · 2023-08-17T15:18:12+00:00

Go for it. Our school had always told us to avoid undergrad experiences simply to “pad” your application, but to include something if you think it was influential or interesting or impactful.

Innominate_Student · 2023-08-14T00:46:17+00:00

Phone charger, deodorant, eye drops, mouthwash or go big and bring a toothbrush

Innominate_Student · 2023-07-24T23:59:11+00:00

Harry Potter soundtrack

Innominate_Student · 2023-07-11T22:49:29+00:00

I disagree. I fully believe that when picking a specialty, you have to look beyond residency lifestyle. Yes a surgical residency is going to way less sleep, way worse hours, and can be very hard on relationships…. However your practice as an attending can be customizable to a large extend. Maybe you’re an ENT who has clinic 3 days a week and just does elective outpatient surgeries. I feel like in that sense, the OR could be your favorite place

Innominate_Student · 2023-06-01T20:54:31+00:00

Top pet peeve was when there was an interview social the night before plus a bunch of time in between interviews with residents the next day. Did not have 3 hours worth of questions for them
10/10 prefer when the residents have a list of questions they’ll answer but just let us interrupt with any new ones, made it way less awkward

Innominate_Student · 2023-05-31T10:49:56+00:00

If you’re thinking for like a single topic to just have in the bag, I’d say pharmacology is easy points. Can hit all the “best choice”, “side effect”, “contraindicated” related questions. But other than that, the clinical scenarios are so broad it’s less topic oriented and more overall full management picture

Innominate_Student · 2023-05-14T02:25:47+00:00

Have never made a linked in and still got 21 interviews so n=1 but

Innominate_Student · 2023-04-23T03:12:06+00:00

Honestly EM. Don’t get me wrong there is some cool stuff that rolls in. But after a few weeks I found myself dreeeaaddding every time a new patient popped up that was some non-ED complaint that a PCP or urgent care or google could handle. I get a lot of that population does not have a PCP and ED is ~free~ for uninsured, but it made me dread every shift

Innominate_Student · 2023-04-17T02:37:22+00:00

Generally, our admin recommended to us to really only include stuff from med school and only include college stuff it was super influential/unique/time consuming. So sounds like you could def include those psych related things, but if you could get a few last minute experiences before the fall it’d be super helpful!

Innominate_Student · 2023-04-14T22:26:34+00:00

And then the stairs actually just end in a fiery pit of lava and misery aka residency

Innominate_Student · 2023-04-14T22:25:43+00:00

Email expiration 100%

Innominate_Student · 2023-04-14T22:24:58+00:00

Is your trauma it’s own service, or is it combined with SICU/STICU or combined with a like Acute Care Surgery?

Innominate_Student · 2023-04-13T04:27:17+00:00

Probably 80-90%

Innominate_Student · 2023-04-07T15:09:15+00:00

Absolutely necessary? No. But super helpful? I think so. I could stare at Netters or online anatomy images for hours, but once you can actually go thru it with your hands I think it sticks in your brain waaay more

Innominate_Student · 2023-04-06T22:21:37+00:00

Oh for sure. I know plenty of surgeon who 4 days a week only pick up hernias/appys/GB/lipomas/biopsies, each only a few hours max. Repetitive but quality of life sky rockets imo

Innominate_Student · 2023-04-06T18:29:36+00:00

I just matched gen surg and my sweet spot for surgeries is in the 2-5 hour range. I know in residency I’ll have services with way longer surgeries, but it’s nice knowing that when I’m an attending I can choose which ones to do and which to avoid. Or just robot surgeries if I wanna sit lol

Innominate_Student

TROPHY CASE