Easiest surgical residency

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Fried Plantaris

Fried Plantaris

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Least amount of hours as an attending? Important to know I’ll be doing a military residency thanks.
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Mass Effect said:
No surgery in psych. It does beg the question though, OP, why you want to go into surgical residency if your objective is the least amount of hours? Is it just the procedures you like? Because you can do ED and do procedures.
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Why does going into something surgical mean you are forced to work 60 hours + a week? Doing something I'd enjoy doing for between 40-50 hours a week is the objective
 
Skeedalisk said:
Why does going into something surgical mean you are forced to work 60 hours + a week? Doing something I'd enjoy doing for between 40-50 hours a week is the objective
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I'll defer to my surgical colleagues, but based on what they've said here in the past and my own friends who are surgeons, seems few surgical specialties offer 40-hour workweeks. Could always do general surgery with an outpatient practice.
 
Skeedalisk said:
Why does going into something surgical mean you are forced to work 60 hours + a week? Doing something I'd enjoy doing for between 40-50 hours a week is the objective
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Because a lot of people need surgery, surgery is a lot of work, and there aren't that many surgeons around.

In order to start the OR on time you have to have rounded on all of your existing inpatients by 7am or whatever. A lot of operations take a long time, and in any case there is room turnover, anesthesia, etc. that make surgery a time-consuming lifestyle.

Then you gotta see the patients in the afternoon/evening.
 
Skeedalisk said:
Least amount of hours as an attending?
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Ophthalmology, followed by plastic surgery, followed by ENT.

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Skeedalisk said:
Why does going into something surgical mean you are forced to work 60 hours + a week? Doing something I'd enjoy doing for between 40-50 hours a week is the objective
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Several reasons, including that the people paying the insurance want to cover as few individuals as possible, which means working more hours. Furthermore there ain't a million surgeons running around everywhere. You're either in a smaller town on call all the time or you're in a city where your call is a lot busier.
 
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I’ve seen great hours and horrible hours in all surgical fields. The attendings I’ve seen who work the best hours are ones that:

1. Have fellowship training (breast surgery, Endocrine Surgery, etc) that favors more elective procedures
2. Perform more outpatient procedures not requiring hospital observation/admission
3. Have residents/PA’s to buffer overnight pages/calls
4. Don’t take call (which is possible in breast surgery, hand surgery, and a few others if you look).
5. Don’t work at a trauma center.
 
If you love using your hands and can't see yourself doing anything else, go into surgery otherwise...

Don't go into surgery. It's not worth it if lifestyle matters to you. The surgeons flock in and always refute this by saying they have lives outside the hospital but they are all in their mid to late 40s. For residency and 5-10 years post residency you will be going balls to the wall. Even if there are jobs post-residency that allow normal business hours without call, you are going to make significantly less money which renders doing surgery pointless in the first place. (Obvs not all about money, but I'm saying that if you take such an easy schedule that you are making the same money as a psychiatrist, then why not just do a specialty that has an inherently easier lifestyle during residency too).
 
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neusu said:
I legitimately would have taken the offer to just crash in the on-call room for free as opposed to having to drive home post-call and come back every other day.
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Yup. And that sweet $20 in meal money per call shift in adds up when it's q2!
 
Free411 said:
i DoNt ThiNk LaZy PeoPLe ShOuLD bE sURgeONS
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not sure if triggered or mad

also trying to understand the awkwardly attached meme picture as those things can be put into posts - sort of loses the punch you might be going for - is the implication I’m a basement dweller mall ninja making criticism of the troops?

you kids these days. I’ll need translation.
 
jdh71 said:
not sure if triggered or mad

also trying to understand the awkwardly attached meme picture as those things can be put into posts - sort of loses the punch you might be going for - is the implication I’m a basement dweller mall ninja making criticism of the troops?

you kids these days. I’ll need translation.
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Fixed it.
 
As an attending surgeon I don’t think it’s unreasonable to work 50-60 hours a week, if you don’t count call. I have 2 days of OR usually starting at 715 going to 3 or 4 depending on turnover and if at the main hospital or satellite surgery center and 2.5 days of clinic starting at 830 with last patient at 345 but invariably run behind and usually get done with notes etc by 530. One of my OR days is on Friday so I round Saturday morning for about 45 minutes usually on the way to brunch or some other activity with family, sometimes I bring my daughter for rounds, patients enjoy it. I’ve certainly had days where I run late in the OR but those are rare and I’ve only had to come in 3 times in the past 6 months for call things. But I am subspecialist within a subspecialty in an academic practice and all of my patients are generally healthy and many surgeries go home the same day. I doubt I could have a similar schedule in PP. I know plenty of ENTs and general urologists and subspecialty urologists and orthos and even some general surgeons who have similar schedules of course this is in a huge hospital system with a deep call pool, an acute care surgery service and residents and fellows. So anything is possible as an attending but generally any surgical residency is pretty brutal and I think it requires the mentality of willing to work very hard and not necessarily plan on having an easy lifestyle though I also think it’s unreasonable to feel that as an attending you should work as much as you want. If you’ve made it to the other side, do whatever you want
 
Skeedalisk said:
How many hours would Optho or ENT attending work a week? The chart only lists their hours in relation to family med.

And do Optho/ENT have the easiest surgical residency?
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When it comes to attending life, they can both be cush, especially ophtho. But as far as residency, ENT is hard freakin core, up there with ortho and plastics as far as being the workhorses of the hospital. Gen surg, nsx, vascular, and CT usually surpass these though. They've got too many emergent cases.

But ophtho is cushhhh during residency man.
 
The thing is; you need to do a lot of cases in residency and be busy to get good that includes working long hours. Before I got my cush schedule as an attending I did almost 1000 surgeries in fellowship and close to 3x that number of individual procedures while working 80+ hours for 3 years. I don’t think the right approach is to look for an easy residency or the one with least hours because that does truly limit your learning. There is nothing scarier then doing your first major surgery out of training and the only thing you have to fall back on is the stuff you did in training and if that has been insufficient then both you and the patient are in for a wild ride.

Also I thought that in military matches you have less choice because they want to train docs based on their need not necessarily on what you want to do. I know of a couple of people who wanted to do urology and ortho who had to do GS because they need more of the latter then the former. Please correct me if I’m wrong
 
Skeedalisk said:
How many hours would Optho or ENT attending work a week? The chart only lists their hours in relation to family med.

And do Optho/ENT have the easiest surgical residency?
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Why do you need the easiest residency? You get to train once. If you want to have a cush job afterwards then that’s one thing. But to have an easy residency is just dumb.

Skeedalisk said:
I know you’re being sarcastic but the doctor who isn’t burnt out and the one with more time to perfect their craft would be the better option for me
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you perfect your craft by doing. Not by chilling
 
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Yeah, if you pick an easy residency and don’t get enough training you’ll end up working longer hours post residency to make up for your lack of training (with liability risks and no-one to save you). As for ophtho, the vast majority aren’t paid as much as other surgeons so even though they work less hours the benefit isn’t really there.
 
ace_inhibitor111 said:
As for ophtho, the vast majority aren’t paid as much as other surgeons so even though they work less hours the benefit isn’t really there.
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If all you care about is money though, it has one of the highest ceilings. I have a friend that just joined a cash only refractive surgery practice. They just do LASIK and elective lens replacement.
 
Skeedalisk said:
I know you’re being sarcastic but the doctor who isn’t burnt out and the one with more time to perfect their craft would be the better option for me
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To perfect your craft you work your arse off. That’s how you get good at surgery.
If you’re looking for “easy,” surgery isn’t for you.
 
OrthoTraumaMD said:
To perfect your craft you work your arse off. That’s how you get good at surgery.
If you’re looking for “easy,” surgery isn’t for you.
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This is no different than achieving/competing at a high level in sports. Hours need to be there, but they also need to be quality hours
 
DO2015CA said:
Wants to be a surgeon to be a surgeon but doesn’t want to put in the work during residency to get the numbers.... *Queue Dr. Death intro*
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Yeah if you can make enough money for your attendings through research and side hustle you don't need to do very many procedures.
 
One problem with the higher hours though, a lot of the time isn’t spent in surgery but instead on prerounding, rounding, running the list, then rounding again later in the day. Plus seeing a ton of consults and floorwork. If you only counted the surgical time it would probably amount to 50 hours or less a week.
 
OP said he's going through military residency right? I don't think Ophtho, ENT, or Plastics is really in your favor. iirc I saw ONE residency spot for Ophtho in the Air Force this upcoming match cycle. @Skeedalisk even though you asking a general question you may find more information on Military match in the Military medicine forum.
 
ace_inhibitor111 said:
One problem with the higher hours though, a lot of the time isn’t spent in surgery but instead on prerounding, rounding, running the list, then rounding again later in the day. Plus seeing a ton of consults and floorwork. If you only counted the surgical time it would probably amount to 50 hours or less a week.
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you still have to learn how to take care of the patients you do surgery on

this isn’t a “problem” it’s learning to be a surgeon

I know its a meme to crap on how lazy kids are these days but ****
 
ace_inhibitor111 said:
One problem with the higher hours though, a lot of the time isn’t spent in surgery but instead on prerounding, rounding, running the list, then rounding again later in the day. Plus seeing a ton of consults and floorwork. If you only counted the surgical time it would probably amount to 50 hours or less a week.
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Surgery is the easy part, the decision and managing the post operative course is the hard part.
 
ace_inhibitor111 said:
One problem with the higher hours though, a lot of the time isn’t spent in surgery but instead on prerounding, rounding, running the list, then rounding again later in the day. Plus seeing a ton of consults and floorwork. If you only counted the surgical time it would probably amount to 50 hours or less a week.
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“prerounding, rounding, running the list, then rounding again later in the day. Plus seeing a ton of consults and floorwork.” This is like a perfect description of how to become a good doctor...surgeons included. Add in some self study time, a few lectures and you are well on your way. What you just described is called seeing patients. You may think seeing patients and running the list is “scutwork” and somehow below you but, lemmie just tell you, as an attending ICU doc, I round multiple times per day, do consults, and answer pages all day long. The moment you realize even “stupid” pages have potentially deadly consequences if answered incorrectly, is the moment you will have graduated to being a real doctor. Unfortunately, the only way to achieve that is by...prerounding, rounding, running the list, then rounding again later in the day. Plus seeing a ton of consults and floorwork...for years.
 
CidHighwind said:
Optho, hence why it’s so competitive. Most surgeons don’t really consider them “real surgeons” though unless they’re plastics or retina.
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I haven't ever heard anyone say that they don't consider ophthalmologists to be "real surgeons". Though, the difference between ophthalmology and numerous other surgical specialties is that in ophthalmology, you can be pretty light on the surgical side (mainly for private practice, probably after you've gained some foothold- I don't think that would fly in academia). However, residency and fellowship includes a lot of surgical training, and there are some very challenging procedures there, especially oculoplastics and cornea.
 
DarkHorizon said:
Easiest surgical residency is not something you should strive for.
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Maybe easiest isn’t the right word, but I think everyone should take lifestyle in to consideration. I wish more physicians would talk about this and not look down on students who don’t want to work 100 hours a week the rest of their lives and value their time outside of their job/being a doctor.
 
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