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I was an ophthalmology resident until only about a year ago. I first had contact with them as a med student, then a resident, then a fellow.
Does anyone else think they are a lazy bunch?
Here's my evidence:
1. Always trying to get out of clinic. In one program, the 3rd years purposely did pre-ops slowly so that the junior residents saw all the clinic patients.
2. Always trying to refer patients to another clinic, either another sub-specialty or even another department. This might be partly because the attending doesn't want responsibility or has a habit of consults. On the other hand, ophthalmology residents never want to know about anything else in the body, unlike some residents in other specialties who have a mild interest outside their specialty.
3. Always trying to get the PGY-1 spot that has the laziest schedule and which allows the worst work ethic.
4. Often want to shove the patient out of clinic, skipping refraction whenever possible, trying to avoid doing a dilated exam, skipping steps of a glaucoma follow-up and trying to have stuff done by another resident in 3-4 months, trying to do the minimum on a visit (such as "come back for a visual field then do nothing on that visit except look at the results").
5. Some programs have residents who go on a witch hunt looking for cataracts and avoiding everything else. Not all programs are like that.
This is not to say that ophthalmology residents are all bad. A lot of them like to read a lot. This is not to say that optometry students are any better. A lot of them have poor work ethic and no desire to learn very much.
Within ophthalmology, there seems to be behaviors among different sub-specialties. Neuro-ophthalmologist tend to be thinkers. Sometimes, they are perceived to be weird and nerds. That's actually a mean assessment and something that I don't agree with. Glaucoma people have a subset that don't know what they want to do so they do glaucoma. Oculoplastics people do not have a subset of people who just do the fellowship because they don't know what else to do. Retina people are also goal oriented. As far as uveitis, I only know of one recent fellow so it's too small a sample size.
In the old days, ophthalmologists just wanted to make money so nobody wanted to be in academics. Therefore, some med schools didn't have ophtho departments or they just had 2 faculty. That's changed now, possibly because there are more ophthalmologists or because chairmen have learned that ophtho departments can be a moneymaker (A few chairmen even engage in shady financial dealings, but this is off topic of this post). Also in the old days, a lot of departments were so lazy that they wouldn't give any lectures. That's how the long ophthalmology courses (Stanford, Lancaster, Houston) got started. General surgery, OBGYN, radiology and internal medicine don't have similar courses as they give in house lectures
From my experience, residents in some specialties seem to be less selfish, lazy, and cocky. What do you think about ophthalmology residents?
Does anyone else think they are a lazy bunch?
Here's my evidence:
1. Always trying to get out of clinic. In one program, the 3rd years purposely did pre-ops slowly so that the junior residents saw all the clinic patients.
2. Always trying to refer patients to another clinic, either another sub-specialty or even another department. This might be partly because the attending doesn't want responsibility or has a habit of consults. On the other hand, ophthalmology residents never want to know about anything else in the body, unlike some residents in other specialties who have a mild interest outside their specialty.
3. Always trying to get the PGY-1 spot that has the laziest schedule and which allows the worst work ethic.
4. Often want to shove the patient out of clinic, skipping refraction whenever possible, trying to avoid doing a dilated exam, skipping steps of a glaucoma follow-up and trying to have stuff done by another resident in 3-4 months, trying to do the minimum on a visit (such as "come back for a visual field then do nothing on that visit except look at the results").
5. Some programs have residents who go on a witch hunt looking for cataracts and avoiding everything else. Not all programs are like that.
This is not to say that ophthalmology residents are all bad. A lot of them like to read a lot. This is not to say that optometry students are any better. A lot of them have poor work ethic and no desire to learn very much.
Within ophthalmology, there seems to be behaviors among different sub-specialties. Neuro-ophthalmologist tend to be thinkers. Sometimes, they are perceived to be weird and nerds. That's actually a mean assessment and something that I don't agree with. Glaucoma people have a subset that don't know what they want to do so they do glaucoma. Oculoplastics people do not have a subset of people who just do the fellowship because they don't know what else to do. Retina people are also goal oriented. As far as uveitis, I only know of one recent fellow so it's too small a sample size.
In the old days, ophthalmologists just wanted to make money so nobody wanted to be in academics. Therefore, some med schools didn't have ophtho departments or they just had 2 faculty. That's changed now, possibly because there are more ophthalmologists or because chairmen have learned that ophtho departments can be a moneymaker (A few chairmen even engage in shady financial dealings, but this is off topic of this post). Also in the old days, a lot of departments were so lazy that they wouldn't give any lectures. That's how the long ophthalmology courses (Stanford, Lancaster, Houston) got started. General surgery, OBGYN, radiology and internal medicine don't have similar courses as they give in house lectures
From my experience, residents in some specialties seem to be less selfish, lazy, and cocky. What do you think about ophthalmology residents?
