ENT vs. Neurosurgery

Started by njmedstudent87
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njmedstudent87

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15+ Year Member
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Has anyone on this board ever been in between these two specialties.

I need to make a choice soon as to whether to pursue ENT or neurosurgery. I have my own ideas about each specialty but I wanted to know about the experiences of my friends on the forum here- what made you decide for either specialty.

Thanks 🙂
 
njmedstudent87 said:
Has anyone on this board ever been in between these two specialties.

I need to make a choice soon as to whether to pursue ENT or neurosurgery. I have my own ideas about each specialty but I wanted to know about the experiences of my friends on the forum here- what made you decide for either specialty.

Thanks 🙂
Click to expand...

For what it's worth, I had a tough time deciding between the two, but ultimately went into ENT.

My advice? Get yourself a piece of paper and write out a bunch of categories and see which specialty wins more. Some categories I considered were:

1. variety of surgeries
2. challenge of surgeries
3. variety of pathologies encountered
4. diversity of the field
5. immediate importance of your work.
6. long-term importance of your work
7. pay
8. hours
9. types of colleagues you'd have
10. ability to control your work hours and lifestyle

There were others, but I can't recall. You'll make your own criteria, I'm sure.

If you don't want to do it that way, then simply flip a coin. They are both magnificent specialties and you'll be very happy in either.
 
My advice: do ENT unless you absolutely love NSGY and couldn't do anything else.

Do a rotation in each specialty; the decision should be pretty obvious after that as the lifestyle and spectrum of procedures/pathologies is quite different between the 2 fields.
 
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Have you done rotations in both? I completely agree with the others that the differences are night and day different. NSurg is a passion that few physicians have- if you are one of those guys then go for it, we need great NSurg colleagues to work with. If you have any ideas about having a life or want great patient outcomes, then steer clear of NSurg. They do great work but their patients are generally worse for the wear in the process and their hours as residents and attendings can be brutal.
 
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