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Call in OMFS
- Thread starter Dr2BCan
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Hahaha.... that I know. But I still enjoy the diversity of practice and the surgery in OMFS. I was just wondering the different scopes of practice. Like if people can make a living and is it practical to remove 3rd mollars every day or do most guys need to be part of a call group that handles emergencies or hospital related traumas.
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Didn't you post last week that you matched into Optho?
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You can pull all the teeth you want as a GP, but why in the world would you want to spend 4-6yrs 100+hrs/week to get trained in the full scope of OMFS, if you only want to pull teeth and take no call. Sounds like a cop out. Go do an internship and see if you really want to OMFS, or learn to take out teeth in that year, and be happy.
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Of all the private practice oral surgeons I've met, more often than not, they are NOT taking significant call. Some may take a week/month at a level II/III but without the neuro, all the face trauma goes to level I according to them.
So the op might just be thinking realistically, what is the call commitment of a practicing oral surgeon. It seems like you can be awfully lazy and pull teeth all day with no call and no one is going to stop you.
Of course, losing 4-6 years of your life to do just this is also pretty lame.
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I was under the impression that OMFS residency is nowhere near as malignant as their medical residency counterparts. From what I understand, you do an intern year on the g-surg service (which would blow big hairy donkey balls) and then finish the rest of your time as an OMFS resident with a much better schedule than the 100hr/week g-surg guys. Am I wrong here?
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I have no idea where you got this impression, but you are dead wrong. Any good OMFS residency will have you working 100+ hours/week. Strictly speaking, we are not accredited by the ACGME, so the 80 hour work week doesn't apply, unless the hospital enforces it upon all residencies (as it tries to at our institution).
The reason OMFS residency can be just as brutal as any of the other surgical residencies is that you get consulted for a lot of non-operative stuff that a) takes time to evaluate and write a formal consult and b) never occurs at opportune times (i.e. always occurs at 3 AM), in addition to the operative stuff.
In addition, one thing that we do that no other surgical residency has to do is the pre-operative and surgical planning for orthognathic surgery, which anyone will tell you, can take a lot of time. Doing the model surgery, making splints, etc. takes a significant amount of time and is not done during clinic hours. You do it after hours.
Here's a recent example of just how messed up things can get in this context:
You are asked to do the model surgery and make the splints for a case on Thursday. You show the model surgery to the attending on Wednesday and the attending decides that, instead of a one piece lefort, it should be a two-piece. Guess what - now you have to do the model surgery again and make a new splint. And there goes Wednesday night.
I know that doing this stuff will only take you a few hours, but add onto that all of the other stuff you have to do, especially if you're on call, and it adds up very quickly.
As a piece of general advice, I'd echo what my esteemed colleagues have already suggested to you - don't go into OMFS if you want to desire a cush private practice life taking out teeth and placing implants. Even though that is what the majority of OMFS guys in private practice do, it is not the most efficient way to get to that road, nor the most cost-effective. If money is your goal, go do a extraction heavy GPR or OMFS intern year and then be a general dentist. No need for you to waste 4 - 6 years of your life learning stuff of which 80% will be of no use to you.
Another thing - if you think OMFS is different in this regard from other surgical specialties, you need to spend more time learning about the reality of surgical practice. Plastics guys spend many years training to do everything, but many, if not most, in private practice try to build up their cosmetic practice so they don't have to depend on the hospital and take hand/face call. ENT guys - private practice guys really don't do the full scope ENT - they do tubes/tonsils, laryngology and stuff that pays $$$, as well as facial cosmetics. There is a real crisis in facial trauma in the communities and it is not only because the OMFS guys don't want to take call, the ENTs and plastics guys are also jumping ship. There was a recent article in PRS supporting this, show that, on average, every dollar you bill for trauma gets you reimbursed about 20 cents.
I'll get off my soapbox now.
