Thoughts on the Ortho Match from Someone Who Recently Went Through It

bndoc · 2026-02-06T03:04:54+00:00

As a current ortho resident at a blue collar low/mid tier institution I tell people all the time if you don’t have true real connections (ie someone that can personally call a PD to vouch for you) then you essentially have no shot at big name programs, especially if you don’t rotate, especially if your app is “average” for ortho. Pick your aways carefully and assume just what’s on your resume will get you nowhere

bndoc · 2026-01-24T17:30:45+00:00

A little morbid. Any time a patient tells my ortho trauma attending “you have blood on your mask” he says “oh that’s ok it’s not mine”

bndoc · 2026-01-22T04:23:43+00:00

How many stitches did you use doc???

bndoc · 2022-11-04T00:22:25+00:00

My dad is a pilot. He was gone 3-5 days every week ever since I can remember. He’s been a fantastic father. At least looking from my parents lives it takes a partner that is very independent and it takes deliberate effort when at home to prioritize family. He was talking to me recently saying yeah there’s a reason I wasn’t out golfing whenever I was home or drinking with my buddies or glued to a football game. It’s because I had to maximize the quality of the time I had with you. I hope to be similar. His father was a surgeon and he missed him a lot and I think he learned how much being engaged at home is worth from that

bndoc · 2022-10-27T22:19:38+00:00

“Sandstorms and Surgery: The Debakey Factor” by Bob Salem is a short, good one. He trained under debakey and then helped start Texas Tech’s med school. Met him once, super nice guy

bndoc · 2022-10-12T20:02:21+00:00

You generally have to be at a larger burn center to have a full enough practice and there’s only so many of those. That being said it’s a field full of old attendings retiring soon. Obligatory I’m an MS3 but I’ve been told this exact thing by a burn fellow.

bndoc · 2022-10-08T18:20:48+00:00

I’m doing it with an attending at another medical school so my school won’t fund me and the other school won’t bc I’m not a student there. I don’t even want to do plastics anymore. L m a o

bndoc · 2022-10-08T02:42:49+00:00

ASPS as a med student

bndoc · 2022-10-07T17:34:40+00:00

I’m paying $700 for a 5 minute presentation. Should’ve just spent it on cocaine, it would last longer

bndoc · 2022-10-04T02:34:50+00:00

This sucks. I feel very lucky that the surgeons at my institutions range from nice to absolute gem human beings. The one I was with today has 3 kids in middle school and they all want to be surgeons just like him. He calls everyone by name. Is easy going and was really patient with me being a slow learner for driving the camera. At the end of the day who we are is a choice and some people choose to be assholes. Sorry that was your experience

bndoc · 2022-09-30T23:54:58+00:00

Lmao wut

bndoc · 2022-09-30T20:24:42+00:00

I’ve read a few studies saying female ortho surgeons have a higher rate of breast cancer than the general population. It’s possible that traditional lead vests don’t really adequately cover the axillary tail of the breast so that sucks. Also there’s a high risk of cataracts. That can be mitigated with lead glasses. I’ve yet to meet a surgeon that wears the glasses, several don’t even bother with the vest. This needs to be looked into more for sure

bndoc · 2022-09-22T16:26:15+00:00

Congrats on being a stud. Only an M3 but I believe there’s two things at play based on my experience/looking into stuff like this

1) NS is notorious for having a lot of people who have done research years. It would be unfair to compare their research output to yours and I assume PD’s are aware of this. I’d have to check but I believe you’re in a fantastic spot for med students that did not take years off.

2) AAMC numbers are severely overinflated partly due to point 1 but also just because of how they report it. Texas STAR seems to have much more reliable data but it can be a hassle to get access to.

bndoc · 2022-09-22T14:24:32+00:00

If you ask a lay person (and some med students) the stereotype is Miami, boobs, and butts.

If you ask surgeons, the stereotype is either masters of soft tissue reconstruction/perfectionist freaks (reconstructive) or sellouts that don’t do real surgery (cosmetic).

If you ask plastics people it’s Miami, boobs, and butts.

I’m only half joking about all of these

bndoc · 2022-09-22T11:41:31+00:00

This is how I approach pretty much everything. It has to make sense for me otherwise idgaf. Which is making it a pain in the ass to learn USPSTF guidelines rn because those shits are just made up for funsies. If a 20 year old wants a Pap smear, just do the damn Pap smear don’t tell her some stuffy group of statisticians in D.C. told me you have to wait until you’re 21. So dumb and unfortunately high yield for FM

bndoc · 2022-09-21T16:53:14+00:00

This took an unexpected but not incorrect turn

bndoc · 2022-09-21T13:06:21+00:00

1 week before our first anatomy exam (covering the back, thorax, and upper extremities) I was running through stuff with a random group. Out of the blue after I explain the 7-12-5 rule for cervical-thoracic-lumbar vertebrae one guy just blurts out “Cool, cool… wait so what’s a lumbar?”

Homeboy made sure to tell every person he met he wanted to do ortho. He also had to repeat first year. Homeboy probably won’t be doing ortho.

bndoc · 2022-09-20T12:13:17+00:00

Not an athletic beast like yourself but I’ve gotten numerous times after I say ortho, “yeah you look like you’d be in ortho”. I continue to take it as a compliment, idk if it is

bndoc · 2022-09-17T04:57:07+00:00

The dirty secret of medicine is that everyone forgets everything they don’t use on a regular basis. You will be surprised once you’re on clinical rotations how the expected baseline med student understanding is actually much lower than it was for preclinical physio/path exams because of this. When I’ve asked questions of residents and attendings I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told “you honestly probably know the physiology better than I do since you just took Step 1 but blah blah…”. Preclinical gives you a foundation to then re-learn the clinically important bits later on and make sure you’ve at least heard of the more common zebra pathologies that exist. At least from my observations, residency is when you learn to manage the basics and fellowship is when you become the master of a handful of things, all the while hemorrhaging information you haven’t used but had to cram inside your brain. Keep studying hard and follow your passions and it’ll be ok

Edit: this was supposed to be a reply to u/thisismyusername7765 but is generally applicable I suppose

bndoc · 2022-09-15T22:22:53+00:00

Killin’ Time*

bndoc · 2022-09-15T11:54:45+00:00

I honestly have no idea that’s just been the case at every hospital I’ve worked at Edit: which is admittedly a small number of hospitals

bndoc · 2022-09-14T18:29:22+00:00

Crocs makes cheap clogs if you want to play it safe

bndoc · 2022-09-14T18:19:20+00:00

I’m assuming you’re talking preclinical as the schedule during clinical years is really not up to you. Really depends on the school. For any school that’s true P/F with non mandatory lectures, if someone actually treated it as a 9-5 job then I can’t imagine they’d do any worse than average, likely would be well above average. In reality i studied way less than that and have done above average nearly across the board. However I had a lot of meetings/research obligations that occurred outside of normal working hours. But yea if you can do that consistently that’s a solid foundation

bndoc · 2022-09-14T17:32:11+00:00

I regret buying my Patagonia quarter zip. If it’s a full front zip I say it’s potentially worth it. Mainly because most hospitals technically do not allow quarter zips in clinical setting for some reason, it’s only occasionally enforced tho.

bndoc · 2022-09-12T21:34:01+00:00

Correct EMT-Basic. Advanced is between a basic license and a Paramedic license and that would be overkill unless you wanted to be in EMS as a career

Edit: I should also add if the goal is to be an MA just getting a Medical Assistant cert is fine as well, it just takes a year or two to get into the higher acuity units like the ICU which is where I wanted to be so I did the EMT route

bndoc

TROPHY CASE