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Hello there. I hope this is an appropriate place to post my questions. I'm a 3rd year DO student who has just discovered a love for orthopedic surgery. I'm doing an ortho trauma rotation right now and I love it. I honestly had no idea I was interested in surgery at all and I'm really surprised by how much I love this. I actually didn't even know this rotation was going to be ortho ... I was told it was straight up trauma.
I started 3rd year thinking I wanted to do EM or neurology, loved my first rotation (internal medicine), but I have very little interest in outpatient medicine and don't care at all about long term patient continuity. I didn't think I cared about having a procedural aspect to what I do, but now that I've done ortho, I see that I could never do a specialty that doesn't involve procedures. However, I do wonder if I'd miss the more general aspect of medicine (managing diverse medical complications).
I'm certainly not saying I'm set on this choice, but I have my concerns about my ability to pursue this specialty.
First off: I'm female. I've always kind of been the kind of girl who hangs out mostly with guys and likes to watch/play sports, etc. So the lack of women in the field doesn't bother me and I'm not intimidated by this male-dominated specialty. But I know that as a woman, my chances might not be as good. I also do have to admit that I would like to have a baby sometime in residency, and I can only imagine how that would go over in the ortho world.
Secondly, I didn't do that awesome in anatomy. I actually did great in the written component of the course, but I bombed a practical or two, which really dropped my grade in the class (still got a B). I loved the musculoskeletal stuff but wasn't especially interested in going into the lab to study the organ system anatomy. It's my own fault that I didn't do well enough in the class, but I didn't put forth the effort in the lab component because I HATED the cadavers.
However, I scored a 250 on USMLE step 1 (yeah, I know I shouldn't even bother with allopathic) and 660 on COMLEX 1 and I'm in the top 10% of my class. I didn't get anything lower than a 94% in my second year courses despite being an A/B student 1st year.
But, while I think I'm doing well on this rotation, I don't think I'll be able to get a LOR from it because my attending is only there 1 day a week and doesn't do surgery. I have no idea why he takes students, but I'm actually just paired up with 2 residents and go to whatever cases they do with various attendings. So, I've not had enough contact with him to warrant an LOR, which is unfortunate because he's a former program director of a top allopathic ortho program. I know the residents I'm with like me and I get along with them swimmingly. They've told me they appreciate my enthusiasm for the specialty and my willingness to work hard. But I don't think they can write letters, right? I haven't had enough interaction with any one attending to be comfortable with asking for a letter, either.
I also didn't get honors in my gen surg rotation because I unfortunately got paired up with a terrible preceptor who only takes students because he gets paid. He just marks "pass" across the board for all students and puts no comments on the eval. Of course, I didn't know that ahead of time. When this month is over, I will not have the opportunity to do another even semi-surgical specialty until ob/gyn in June.
Mainly, my questions are regarding how to best increase my chances of getting a residency, how to know for sure that this is what I want to do, how to get past not having a LOR from this attending, and how much does the anatomy grade hurt me? How essential would away rotations be for me?
Thank you in advance for any advice!
I started 3rd year thinking I wanted to do EM or neurology, loved my first rotation (internal medicine), but I have very little interest in outpatient medicine and don't care at all about long term patient continuity. I didn't think I cared about having a procedural aspect to what I do, but now that I've done ortho, I see that I could never do a specialty that doesn't involve procedures. However, I do wonder if I'd miss the more general aspect of medicine (managing diverse medical complications).
I'm certainly not saying I'm set on this choice, but I have my concerns about my ability to pursue this specialty.
First off: I'm female. I've always kind of been the kind of girl who hangs out mostly with guys and likes to watch/play sports, etc. So the lack of women in the field doesn't bother me and I'm not intimidated by this male-dominated specialty. But I know that as a woman, my chances might not be as good. I also do have to admit that I would like to have a baby sometime in residency, and I can only imagine how that would go over in the ortho world.
Secondly, I didn't do that awesome in anatomy. I actually did great in the written component of the course, but I bombed a practical or two, which really dropped my grade in the class (still got a B). I loved the musculoskeletal stuff but wasn't especially interested in going into the lab to study the organ system anatomy. It's my own fault that I didn't do well enough in the class, but I didn't put forth the effort in the lab component because I HATED the cadavers.
However, I scored a 250 on USMLE step 1 (yeah, I know I shouldn't even bother with allopathic) and 660 on COMLEX 1 and I'm in the top 10% of my class. I didn't get anything lower than a 94% in my second year courses despite being an A/B student 1st year.
But, while I think I'm doing well on this rotation, I don't think I'll be able to get a LOR from it because my attending is only there 1 day a week and doesn't do surgery. I have no idea why he takes students, but I'm actually just paired up with 2 residents and go to whatever cases they do with various attendings. So, I've not had enough contact with him to warrant an LOR, which is unfortunate because he's a former program director of a top allopathic ortho program. I know the residents I'm with like me and I get along with them swimmingly. They've told me they appreciate my enthusiasm for the specialty and my willingness to work hard. But I don't think they can write letters, right? I haven't had enough interaction with any one attending to be comfortable with asking for a letter, either.
I also didn't get honors in my gen surg rotation because I unfortunately got paired up with a terrible preceptor who only takes students because he gets paid. He just marks "pass" across the board for all students and puts no comments on the eval. Of course, I didn't know that ahead of time. When this month is over, I will not have the opportunity to do another even semi-surgical specialty until ob/gyn in June.
Mainly, my questions are regarding how to best increase my chances of getting a residency, how to know for sure that this is what I want to do, how to get past not having a LOR from this attending, and how much does the anatomy grade hurt me? How essential would away rotations be for me?
Thank you in advance for any advice!
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