A little confused?

[time md]

This may be a really stupid question, so forgive me if it is. I am still a pre-med and am a little confused about residency.

My question is this:

Lets say that I want to be a general surgeon and I also want to see patients. Would that require two residencies? I know that several doctors at my local hospital do surgies so many days a week and are in their own offices seeing patients a couple days a week.

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[RadGirl]

general surgeons do see patients. just like those surgeons you've seen doing clinic a few times a week. patients go to clinic pre- and post-op for evaluation and often follow-up a few times. they also see patients in the hospital.

 

[Winged Scapula]

This may be a really stupid question, so forgive me if it is. I am still a pre-med and am a little confused about residency.

My question is this:

Lets say that I want to be a general surgeon and I also want to see patients. Would that require two residencies? I know that several doctors at my local hospital do surgies so many days a week and are in their own offices seeing patients a couple days a week.

It depends on what you mean by "seeing patients". General surgeons, as your experience has shown with your local physicians, operate and see patients in their office. If you don't have office hours, you can't evaluate patients pre and post-op. Even trauma surgeons have office hours to see patients.

Therefore, any general surgery residency will train you not only to operate but to evaluate patients in the peri-operative period, or patients with possible surgical complications. You do not need to do a separate residency. A general surgery residency is a minimum of 5 years in length (some require research time which can stretch the residency to 7 years) and you may wish to follow that up with additional subspecialty training in the form of a fellowship - these can range from 1 to 3 years.

If, however, by "seeing patients" you mean practicing more primary care and you really wish to make a career of this, then you might consider a second residency. I would discourage that as its hard to do two diverse things really well.