FAQ - Neurosurgery

[WildWing]

We are working on a consistent set of FAQs for all specialties as part of a revamp of the Specialty Selector.

If you are a practicing Neurosurgeon, please share your expertise by answering these questions.

Thank you in advance for considering this opportunity to give back to the SDN community!

• What is unique or special about this specialty?
• What other specialties did you consider and why did you pick this one?
• What challenges will this specialty face in the next 10 years?
• What are common practice settings for this specialty?
• How challenging or easy is it to match in this specialty?
• What excites you most about your specialty in the next 5, 10, 15 years from now?
• Does your specialty currently use or do you foresee the incorporation of technology such as Artificial Intelligence?
• What are some typical traits to be successful in this specialty? (For example, organization skills, work independently)
• What does a typical workday consist of in your specialty?
• What is the career progression for your specialty?
• How has your work impacted your life dynamics? What is your work-life balance?
• How does healthcare policy impact your specialty?

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[mmmcdowe]

• What is unique or special about this specialty?
• Multiple spheres of specialized practice that are very different (cranial vs spinal vs peripheral for example). Operating on the human mind. Enormous risk-reward ratio.
• What other specialties did you consider and why did you pick this one?
• OBGYN, EM.
• What challenges will this specialty face in the next 10 years?
• Reimbursement issues for new procedures. Learning from the long term consequences of standard of care procedures. Potentially supply-demand issues
• What are common practice settings for this specialty?
• Academic for non-spine practitioners. Private practice for general or spine providers. Spine providers can also do academics but tend to be very specialized (deformity for example).
• How challenging or easy is it to match in this specialty?
• Very challenging
• What excites you most about your specialty in the next 5, 10, 15 years from now?
• Continued evolution of our ability to safely treat the nervous system. Potential for regenerative procedures.
• Does your specialty currently use or do you foresee the incorporation of technology such as Artificial Intelligence?
• Yes, especially within functional neurosurgery but also more generally for planning/mapping purposes.
• What are some typical traits to be successful in this specialty? (For example, organization skills, work independently)
• Interest in patient's global medical care, attention to details, hyper-vigilance, tolerance for discomfort from significant failures (death and disability of patients).
• What does a typical workday consist of in your specialty?
• Very practice and specialty dependent. You can work as much or as little as you like. For example, you could spend 2-3 weeks a month doing locums and sit in a hotel room doing mostly nothing.
• What is the career progression for your specialty?
• Not sure I understand this question.
• How has your work impacted your life dynamics? What is your work-life balance?
• As a pediatric neurosurgeon, I have a significantly better work-life balance than many neurosurgeons whether I want it or not. There are simply less pediatric cases and patients and the culture of pediatric hospitals is less tolerant of multiple rooms and grinding cases into the middle of the night.
• How does healthcare policy impact your specialty?
• Relatively minimal impact outside of reimbursement/insurance issues. However, if there ever is a turn towards more cost efficient public health care measures and away from specialized care, neurosurgery will get the axe hard. I remember reading a cost-analysis of pediatric neuro-oncology cases and even in that, perhaps the most socially valued area of neurosurgery, the mathematics dramatically weighed against it. In other words, you could save a much larger number of children with other medical conditions with the money spent to take care of those few rare children with brain tumors.