Applying for plastic and GS programs at the same place..double cross?

[hewmanoid]

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I have been wondering about this for a while, and hopefully anyone can shed some light on this. I plan to apply for all of integrated plastic residency programs out there, but considering how competitive it is, I'm going to be also applying for general surgery as fallback options because, if I don't get into any of the integrated one, at least I can do GS and do a plastic fellowship.

So, my question is if I were to apply for both plastic and GS at the same institution, would the residency directors look unfavorably upon me because they might think I'm not committed enough? I guess since the residency directors probably know each other, I assume there's no point of trying to hide this from them? What would be the best to way to handle this kind of dilemma? 😕

 

[drpatelplasticsurgery]

check some of my older posts - i dual-applied, things worked out and i matched in plastics, and i had great gen surg fallbacks in the event i didn't match in plastics. pm me if you have more Qs

 

[hewmanoid]

check some of my older posts - i dual-applied, things worked out and i matched in plastics, and i had great gen surg fallbacks in the event i didn't match in plastics. pm me if you have more Qs

Checked out your previous posts, and they were very helpful, nbp.medlaw. The bottom line seems like it's not wise to dual-apply at the same institution. I have a few specific questions though.

1) Is it OK to use a letter from a plastic surgeon for GS assuming I have 3 letters from general surgeons? Or will this give away a wrong impression?

2) How many away rotations did you do? (I hear a lot of people do 3 especially if their schools don't have their own PRS programs.) Did you get all of your letters from your away directors?


Thanks,

 

[drpatelplasticsurgery]

i did only 1 away rotation. my home program has a combined plastics program. in hindsight, it would have been in my interest to have done 2 aways. i agree that you should do at least 2 plastics-related rotations, whether at home or away. up to you if you want to do 3 total. anything more of that probably smacks of desperation and detracts from your overall medical education in your last year of school. i only did 1 away b/c (1) i wanted to do a SICU rotation at home, and (2) i couldn't bear being away from my wife and son for more than a few weeks.

i used 3 letters for gen surg: chair of surgery + 2 trauma surg letters (one of these is the 3rd year surgery clerkship director)

for plastics: chief of home plastics program, chief of away plastics program, 2 letters from home program plastics faculty, letter from surgery clerkship director. initially my 4 letters were comprised of all the non-away rotation people, then once my away letter came through i switched out one of the home faculty letters.

in sum i had 7 letters: 1 away plastics, 3 home plastics, 1 surgery chair, 1 surgery clerkship director (also trauma), 1 other trauma. w/ rare exceptions, i did not use any plastics letters for general surgery - i may have tinkered w/ it for one or two programs (i.e., used both surgery chair letter and home plastics chief letter), and did not get interview offers.

i kept the surgery clerkship letter for all programs, both gen surg and plastics since i honored the rotation.

if you use a plastics letter for gen surg, i suppose it would be most kosher if it were for a program that already has an in-house fellowship (a.k.a. advanced residency). for some of the more old-school gen surg programs, i would avoid doing this, a risk of getting dinged.

remember, everyone talks to one another, and this isn't exclusive to plastics-talking-to-plastics or surgery-talking-to-surgery. make the conservative assumption that anything you say is fair game to be shared program director-to-program director, from surgery-to-plastics, and vice-versa. therefore, be honest and transparent when asked your intentions about your planned specialty (= plastics).