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Title says it all. Any advice?
FM residency requires you to do horrible things like peds, ob and surgery. I'm personally thrilled to know that I'll never have to deliver another baby, do a newborn exam or do peds wards after this month. I guess if you'd regret not doing these things then FM might be for you. There's also FM/psych.
Hear interesting stories vs. asking "Have you had a bowel movement today?" No comparison, Psychiatry is interesting and exciting.
I tend to agree. Every time I have my mind made up that psych is for me, I get the urge to look at an ECG or suture someone up. There is a lot of crap about FM I didn't like, however, most notably the patients who just don't give a damn or the twentieth refill on Lortab for LBP.
If the Army still had its FM/psych program this wouldn't have even been posted, but unfortunately they don't.
One somewhat minor issue is the availability of training locations in the Army. I get a whopping two -- Washington DC and Honolulu. While this would be a godsend for most people, my parents are older and the though of being thousands of miles away is a bit of a turn off. The downside to DC is that I believe the program does not focus as much on therapy as the HI program.
I actually turned down doing a Pelvic on my ER rotation. Probably 90% of medicine I"m pretty apathetic about, but I did get really excited when I talked to a 26 yo BPD in an acute manic phase.
Regardless, I have to decide in like two weeks because I need to schedule my audition ADTs.
The pros of psych: intellectually stimulating (I never had to force myself to study it), I think I have a somewhat natural "knack" for it, and I find the idea of improving quality of life much more appealing than curing someone's sinusitis. I think treated psych patients tend to be a helluva lot more grateful as well.
The 16 year old male pt I had on the CSP who saw, "Oprah Winfrey monsters", thought alarm clocks meant Jesus was having sex, and would regularly get naked a copulate with the floor was 100x more interesting than the noncompliant idiot T2DM with an A1C of 22%
Honestly, if I didn't feel like doing psych would remove me from everything else I have been studying for the past four years none of this would be an issue.
Honestly, if I didn't feel like doing psych would remove me from everything else I have been studying for the past four years none of this would be an issue.
LOL. I got one. 3rd patient ever in residency was a 70'ish lady from an outlying ED, "medically cleared" and assured to be healthy. Arrives with BP 210/170 after 3 hrs in ambulance. ED records 3-4 hrs earlier showed BP 180/110 or so.Whopper can probably add some great stories about all the patients he's had that were "cleared" by the ED which subsequently had broken this-that-or-the-others.
Thanks for the info. I'm pretty sure I will be applying psych in June. How I just have to worry about matching into one of the Army's two programs. My grades aren't bad, my Level I score wasn't great -- I passed to say the least. But, at the time I wasn't gunning for a high score anyway. Would this be a problem?
My friend who matched at Tripler did an away there. I think it was probably unnecessary, but it certainly made him matching there a "without a doubt" situation. So, while I usually discourage people strongly from doing aways, the military situation might make it worthwhile to consider.
My friend who matched at Tripler did an away there. I think it was probably unnecessary, but it certainly made him matching there a "without a doubt" situation. So, while I usually discourage people strongly from doing aways, the military situation might make it worthwhile to consider.