Chances for ortho? - failed third block of MS1

[foreigner14]

I'm an M1 at a mid-tier med school and I just failed one of my blocks (neuro). I am doing remediation in a month. MSK was my first and best block and everything went downhill from there due to some family and personal problems. Barely passed my second block (cardio and pulm) as well. I feel like I probably am at the bottom of my class now. I think I might be interested in orthopedic surgery considering that I really enjoyed gross anatomy lab and MSK. Will this be a big red flag when it comes to applying for residency?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[M&L]

Honestly - yes . This year ortho is so competitive, so many ppl with perfect grades didn’t match .

 

[Darrow O'Lykos]

It’ll be a red flag. You need to find a way to bounce back and recover stronger than the rest of your peers, as well as ace your rotations, and even then you’ll have a difficult time matching.

Not impossible, but if you want it, let this motivate you to make the changes you need to make it happen. As aforementioned, there are plenty of candidates with spotless applications that don’t match.

 

[Captain_Falcon]

Huge flag. To be blunt, at this point you cannot make a single mistake for fields like ortho

 

[Niwrad]

There’s a reason ortho bros are insanely confident - they are aggressively aggressive with having the optimal application for matching into ortho. Thinking back on some friends I know, they were basically jerks but they knew their stuff.

My first hand impression is if you’re the kind of person who’s considers other type A personalities as B types you might get matched to orthopedics.

 

[PathNeuroIMorFM]

OP: Ask your dean if this will show up on your MSPE if you successfully remediate. Some schools erase this mistake, some don't.

if you’re the kind of person who’s considers other type A personalities as B types you might get matched to orthopedics.

This is really beautifully said. I'm stealing this.

 

[Esmolol]

My first hand impression is if you’re the kind of person who’s considers other type A personalities as B types you might get matched to orthopedics.

That is so freakin’ insanely true!

 

[EmbryonalCarcinoma]

Not to derail, but what specialties are for type B people?

 

[Esmolol]

Some would say anesthesia. Correct me if I am wrong but - NOT anesthesiology. You’ve to be a covert type A to be able to take the crap from open type As…

There is also the traditional ones - path, nephro…

Rumor on “da street” is though that you can convert with nutritional supplements- lots of vitamins C, D, and K and some iodine…

 

[PathNeuroIMorFM]

Not to derail, but what specialties are for type B people?

I reckon anything with lower hours or less competitive. Barring Academics.

FM, Peds, some IM, path, PMR (?) and neuro (?), psych. EM is kind of a mixed bag, imo.

 

[Niwrad]

That said, what if you put a hyper competitive type A personality in a community FM/path program?

Is this how moonlighting came about?

I’m quite curious if anyone has any opinions about this.

 

[Niwrad]

I’m quite interested in rural FM. I have the grades to get into more competitive specialties, but for the underserved community I want to go back to, FM/IM/EM/Gen surg/OB are really the specialties they need.

Even though I could match easily into a community program, I put in a lot more hours than some classmates because I actually will have to know all this stuff. I’ll have to know how to appropriately interpret blood gases and how to put a chest tube in and even how to intubate as an FM hospitalist.

So the people in my class who are top of the class are the ones who want to do derm/ortho and the ones who want to do rural FM. If that answers your question. I’m also regarded as one of the chill people in my class because I don’t have to worry about grades or matching, but I will absolutely be getting as many hours in residency as I can haha

It certainly seems like FM can vary more considerably than in a lot of other fields but the better ones did seem to solely exist in rural areas but n=1.

If in an urban area than all other specialities besides FM such as the ones you mentioned seem more rigorous.

I would guess that it logically would stem from having a higher population density could eliminate the need for a pure generalist such as FM.

 

[voxveritatisetlucis]

Depends on what you mean by mid tier