what are the pros and cons of PM&R and anesthesiolgy?

what do u see in the future of these 2 fields, lets say 10 years from now? thanx for the input.

Um, you seem to be pretty curious about PM&R. I'll do what I can to get Stinky Tofu back around here, and maybe he can answer some of your questions.

This is obviously a biased view, but many of my firends/classmates did go into Anesthesia so I know some of their reasoning.

Anesthesia:

Pros: Lifestyle, hours, pay, and benign residency.
Cons: Working with surgeons, little patient interaction, and lack of respect from surgeons and sometimes nurses -- this does not occur frequently, but when I did my GenSurg, Ortho, Neurosurg rotations, I did get that feeling.

PM&R:

Pros: Lifestyle, hours, pay, and benign residency. I liked working as a team with ST, OT, PT, etc. PTs and OTs are pretty cool and fun to hang out with too.

Cons: Most medical students or Pre-meds know little about the field since there are very few PM&R residencies and even fewer good residencies. I think the main con is that their is a lack of understanding about what a Physiatrist does.

Why I chose PM&R?

I didn't really like to work with surgeons. I am interested in Interventional Pain Managment, but that's not all I want to do. I wanted to do a little bit of Sports, IDETS, SNRBs, and EKGs. My wife is an OT so I knew much more about PM&R than most medical students otherwise I might not have known about the field and would've chosen something else. I also plan on opening my own clinic and the only way I could do that with Anesthesia would be to open a Pain Clinic and that would get boring and frustrating after awhile. Also with an aging population and very few PM&R residencies, the outlook looks good for a physiatry -- especially for someone who comes from a good program.

Stink! You're back! Yea.

What kind of research would you recommend for a soon-to-be-second-year interested in PM&R? This summer I'm doing a clinical research thing in the ED, hoping to focus in on some gneuro projects. What do you suggest? What journals should one read?

Thanks.

Fiat - Are you finally done with your first year at UCI? I guess you won't be hanging around the wonderful world of OCo this summer, huh?

PM&R is a really broad field and you could do research in a variety of areas that you are interested in. Areas include sports med, Traumatic Brain Injury, Spinal Cord Injury, Pain Management, Neurosurgery/Neurology, Ortho, etc. Personally, I worked with a Neurosurgeon and a physiatrist on a paper about indications for shunting. While at UCI, I mainly did research in the ER and Neuro department as well.

I mainly read journals in the field I was interested in -- Pain, Sports Med, and TBI. I didn't subscribe to any of them, but just read them at the library when I had time. I forgot the name of the journals, but by your third year if you are still interested in PM&R, you might want to join the AAPMR (http://www.aapmr.org) and/or Association of Academic Physiatrists (http://www.physiatry.org). I can't remember the exact name of the journal and probably won't for sometime. I'll be breathing, dreaming, living, and dreading General Surgery for the next couple of months.

I think the more interesting areas of research are TBI and Pain because they are still a relatively new field. There is still a lot of research to be done in the area.

does the phrase "bat out of hell" mean anything to you? ;) Yep, I'll be heading up to Northern Cal with my love this Saturday, after the anatomy final Friday and attendant drunken debauchery that evening.

Hey, I was wonderin'--are there any PM&R PGY-1 internship years that an MD grad could do at a DO hospital to learn OMM? That would be cool.

Originally posted by fiatslug:
<STRONG>

Hey, I was wonderin'--are there any PM&R PGY-1 internship years that an MD grad could do at a DO hospital to learn OMM? That would be cool.</STRONG>

Fiat, check out university of Michigan's PM&R program. They have lectures in OMM as part of their core curriculum. Also, I hear that RIC teaches OMM to their residents too.

http://www.med.umich.edu/pmr/edu/resprgm.htm#didactic_curriculum

--dave

id like to hear from people who are currently do their residency in PM&R or from those who have completed their residency and are now practicing physiatrists.

why made you decide to go into PM&R?

are u happy with choosing PM&R?

is there anything unpleasant/pleasant in PM&R that you have encountered that you wish you had known before?

any advice for someone considering PM&R?

any application advice?

thanx for the input.

Originally posted by drusso:
<STRONG>Fiat, check out university of Michigan's PM&R program. They have lectures in OMM as part of their core curriculum. Also, I hear that RIC teaches OMM to their residents too.

http://www.med.umich.edu/pmr/edu/resprgm.htm#didactic_curriculum

--dave</STRONG>

Thanks Dave!