how to choose research and budget time with so many surgical interests??

[lykyamy00]

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so i am interested in some kind of surgical sub specialty. for the longest time i thought i wanted to do ortho. now i'm more open. i've been interested in ent and basically once i realized i had interests outside of ortho i figured i should probably check out as much as i can.

so my summer between m1 and m2 i already have a commitment to do clinical vascular surgery research and have an excellent chance of getting published if i put in the work obviously ( i am doing this because it seemed interesting and was one of the bunch that i applied for and happened to be the one i got accepted to. and its a paid position so i am absolutely doing this project). i just got an opportunity to also work on a hand surgery lit review project that would also be over the summer. these would possibly extend into m2. they are both flexible projects time wise. a lot of work can be done at home due to the large lit and chart review components. they do have some required meetings in their respective departments ( vascular vs plastics) and i would be able to get some clinical experience in each.

my question is, should i focus on just the vascular project? or should i do both? obviously i was hoping to have some kind of fun this summer (living by va beach!) but the beach will always be there and these projects wont! i can probably even do reading on the beach!

also, if i do both the vascular and hand projects, are people in specialties like ortho and ent going to care? (although i realize that hand plastics is similar to ortho and ortho can actually do hand plastics fellowships so i guess this is sort of relevant) How is it possible to do everything when you are interested in everything??? any advice and guidance would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Buzz Me]

For residency, research is research. Competitive fields like Ortho usually require away rotations and other intangibles that you don't have to worry about at this stage of the game. Any research that's interesting to you and is productive will help you in the long run.

Moving to Allo as this topic pertains to M1/M2 issues...surgical residents and attendings can certainly respond there.

 

[235009]

i'd say stick to the vascular project only. u don't even know what kind of time commitment they expect from you and you may be spreading yourself too think. unless of course the lit review has a very flexible timeline and you can get away with not doing too much during the summer and doing the bulk of it during second year.

i think you should also be actively trying to figure out which surgical subspecialty you want to do by shadowing and scrubbing in on cases.