IM and surgery???

[hokte]

Hey yall,
I've been wondering if there are any subspecialties of IM that present the opportunity to perform surgery. I'm interested in IM, but I also think I would enjoy certain aspects of surgery. I really don't have a good concept of all opportunities as far as specialties go. For instance just what youre allowed to do in each speciality. I definately know I don't want to go the OB/GYN route I'll be glad to hear feedback. Thanks

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[Adcadet]

well, this is just an MS2's observation, but there are some IM sub-specialties that do many a procedure. GI, cardio, pulm, critical care come to mind. Perhaps nephrology (I've only seen nephrology when they come to the ICU, in which case they're often starting/running dialysis). Somebody (Ken Isserson) once said/wrote that some people have a hard time choosing between some of the more procedural IM specialties and surgery.

 

[june015b]

You should check out Interventional GI (we are NOT talking about colonoscopy and EGD in Interventional GI) and cardiology. These are sub-subspecialities of GI and cardiology.

 

[AJM]

There are several procedural fields in IM. GI and cards are the two biggest ones. Pulmonary/critical care is also a very big procedural specialty, although there are not quite as many procedures in pulm as there are in GI and cards (still plenty of procedures in pulm to make me happy, though, and the procedures are way more fun than colos). There are interventional pulmonologists sprouting up who are trained in pulmonary, and they pretty much do mostly surgical procedures - things like trachs, chest tubes, rigid/interventional bronchoscopy, and even thoracoscopies.

It's true that many people attracted to surgery are also attracted to the more procedural medical specialties. I can personally attest to that. I thought that I was going to do surgery for most of my time in med school, but ended up making the change to IM during my clinical years, mostly because of my attraction to the interventional medical specialties. I'm now going to be specializing in pulmonary/critical care.