Geographic flexibility in surgical specialties

[yeetus]

if you’re a surgeon who is hellbent on living in a certain area (whether it be NYC, Chicago suburbs, or rural Texas) are your options plentiful?

Does residency geographic location also matter?

Does it vary on which type of surgery (ortho, urology, general surgery, etc)?

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[anonperson]

if you’re a surgeon who is hellbent on living in a certain area (whether it be NYC, Chicago suburbs, or rural Texas) are your options plentiful?

Does residency geographic location also matter?

Does it vary on which type of surgery (ortho, urology, general surgery, etc)?

Depends on specialty and location.

Rural Texas will have different needs than Manhattan and a different demand.

Typically, there is a demand for surgical specialists throughout the country. Compensation well tend to be lower in highly saturated areas.

When looking for a job, you are balancing three things:
Money
Lifestyle/ practice type
Location

A good job will check 2 of those boxes. A unicorn job will check all three but that is rare for a reason.

 

[LucidSplash]

Also depends on what you want to do in a given specialty.

In my own (vascular) for example:

If you want to live in a rural location or work at a smaller community hospital, you may be limited by hospital resources both in terms of specialty-specific equipment and availability/quality/interest of other specialties like critical care and PRS. Hard to do some of the more complex vascular cases without significant investment by the hospital and willingness to take part by other specialties. You can do a lot in these places still, but you need to consider what the hospital can handle financially and what other specialties intersect with yours for multidisciplinary care.

 

[yeetus]

Also depends on what you want to do in a given specialty.

In my own (vascular) for example:

If you want to live in a rural location or work at a smaller community hospital, you may be limited by hospital resources both in terms of specialty-specific equipment and availability/quality/interest of other specialties like critical care and PRS. Hard to do some of the more complex vascular cases without significant investment by the hospital and willingness to take part by other specialties. You can do a lot in these places still, but you need to consider what the hospital can handle financially and what other specialties intersect with yours for multidisciplinary care.

On the other end, if you wanted to work in a city like NYC or Chicago, would there be limitations due to saturation?

 

[yeetus]

Depends on specialty and location.

Rural Texas will have different needs than Manhattan and a different demand.

Typically, there is a demand for surgical specialists throughout the country. Compensation well tend to be lower in highly saturated areas.

When looking for a job, you are balancing three things:
Money
Lifestyle/ practice type
Location

A good job will check 2 of those boxes. A unicorn job will check all three but that is rare for a reason.

So it’s not like a problem of zero jobs in a given area? Like you could find a job in NYC, but there are trade offs?

 

[LucidSplash]

On the other end, if you wanted to work in a city like NYC or Chicago, would there be limitations due to saturation?

Absolutely, there may not be a job of the kind you want at the time you are looking. Also it may depend on your career stage and what an institution is looking to hire (early career va mid career, what role they are looking to fill).

I recently left a job 30mins outside a large city. My first job out of training, which I chose largely because of the location near that city. Many physicians do not stay at their first job out of training for a variety of reasons. I lived in the city and drove 30mins to the location everyday because of where I wanted to live.

There were a couple jobs available in the area in other hospitals when I was looking before leaving that first job, but I know more about what is important to me, and I know my value, compared to when I took the first job. The jobs I was offered were not jobs I was willing to take, each for different reasons. I have significant flexibility for travel but for family reasons not yet able to leave the city I’m living in. So I am doing locums this year and may start looking for an fulltime job again in 2024. Maybe. That may be in my current city depending on what’s available. That may be somewhere else.