An issue that never hit home until now

[HollATme]

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I am fortunate I matched. However, I do not know in what specialty.
I applied to 2 different specialties. One being a competitive one, the other a reasonably competitive one.

I geared my application toward the first one, and then panicked. I thought maybe I should have a backup. I remembered liking one specialty during my 3rd year core rotation. So, I applied to a handful of programs (eight) in that specialty as well. I only ended up ranking one program in that backup (had received five offers, went on only one). I ranked eight in the competitive specialty (all eight). I ranked the backup one at the bottom. I tried to contact NRMP to see about which specialty; however, they said it was "illegal" to tell me. Anyways, any advice if I were to somehow match in the backup specialty? I know that it meant it truly did help me avoid the scramble; however, the 2 fields are completely different. Not having geared myself towards that specialty during my final year of medical school, does this mean it will set me back compared to my future colleagues in my intern year class? Or, will it not matter, and I will catch up and things will be okay? This really did not hit home until after I saw "Congratulations, you have matched!" when opening the NRMP email.

 

[McGillGrad]

You are useless as an intern no matter how much you've prepared.

 

[Smurfette]

It won't matter as an intern which specialty you are in, you'll learn.

Remember that if you match into your 'back up' specialty, it's because you didn't match into your top choice specialty...so be glad you matched into a 'back up' specialty you wanted and didn't have to scramble. If you are miserable in 'back up specialty', you can try to find a spot in your preferred specialty for the following year and switch things up.

 

[dpmd]

You may feel more behind because of it, but will likely be ok as long as you try to keep up. I matched my back up specialty and at first there were a lot of things I had just never really dealt with because all my rotations had been geared toward my primary. In my case it was g surg as the backup and ortho as primary. I was great on trauma because I knew what we should do with all the extremity stuff (and I was familiar with ATLS from my trauma rotation), but with the exception my three week non trauma rotation where it was mostly appy's and chole's I hadn't really done general surgery stuff. I didn't know the management of a bunch of stuff besides what I had read about. Turned out ok and my evals were all good, so maybe it was just me feeling worse about my knowledge than was expected of me (or the stuff I had read about stuck with me enough).

If you match your backup you could try to change around rotations to get more exposure, or just wing it. They know people are going to have varying skill and knowledge levels and should expect to train you.