IM Resident considering switch to ortho

[rs2006]

Advertisement - Members don't see this ad

Hi everyone,

I hope all is well for everyone here. I am currently a 2nd yr IM resident at a "good" (well ranked) IM program and am a bit frustrated and dissatisfied with my current specialty.

Throughout my life, I had always wanted to become an orthopod (I love the toys/technical aspects of the surgeries and have a background in enginerring), but decided against it in my 3rd/4th yr of medical school because I was afraid that I did not have the manual dexterity needed to do ortho. Instead, I chose medicine hoping that I would find something about it that I liked, but unfortunately, this has not happened yet. I am currently in a difficult situation because I am soon to begin my third year of medicine residency and am wondering whether I should just suck it up and continue w/ my current residency (since the earliest I will be able to apply for ortho would be next yr's match) and hope that I can try to get in. I figure that given my circumstances (the fact that I am an IM resident) some of the program directors in ortho would look at my application differently given that in essence (if I apply next year) I would be applying to their program as an IM attending applying for an ortho PGY 1 spot. My Step 1 and Step 2 board scores were okay, i guess (Step 1>220) and step 2 > 230. Now the only issue that still keeps me hesitant about applying to ortho is my manual dexterity-- are there any things I could do to see if I have the dexterity to be surgeon before starting residency? Any thoughts/ Advice would be much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[princekc]

Hi everyone,

I hope all is well for everyone here. I am currently a 2nd yr IM resident at a "good" (well ranked) IM program and am a bit frustrated and dissatisfied with my current specialty.

Throughout my life, I had always wanted to become an orthopod (I love the toys/technical aspects of the surgeries and have a background in enginerring), but decided against it in my 3rd/4th yr of medical school because I was afraid that I did not have the manual dexterity needed to do ortho. Instead, I chose medicine hoping that I would find something about it that I liked, but unfortunately, this has not happened yet. I am currently in a difficult situation because I am soon to begin my third year of medicine residency and am wondering whether I should just suck it up and continue w/ my current residency (since the earliest I will be able to apply for ortho would be next yr's match) and hope that I can try to get in. I figure that given my circumstances (the fact that I am an IM resident) some of the program directors in ortho would look at my application differently given that in essence (if I apply next year) I would be applying to their program as an IM attending applying for an ortho PGY 1 spot. My Step 1 and Step 2 board scores were okay, i guess (Step 1>220) and step 2 > 230. Now the only issue that still keeps me hesitant about applying to ortho is my manual dexterity-- are there any things I could do to see if I have the dexterity to be surgeon before starting residency? Any thoughts/ Advice would be much appreciated. Thanks.

I have no advise for you my friend; but all I can say to you is good luck!

 

[skiz knot]

Now the only issue that still keeps me hesitant about applying to ortho is my manual dexterity-- are there any things I could do to see if I have the dexterity to be surgeon before starting residency? Any thoughts/ Advice would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Do you have monkey hands when suturing a skin biopsy? Do you feel comfortable suturing a small laceration? Are you comfortable inserting central lines in the ICU? These procedures are obviously not what you would do in orthopaedics, but if you don't feel comfortable performing them, you probably wouldn't feel comfortable with surgery. There is probably no real way to know if you will be dextrous enough to be a good surgeon, but realize that it is a learned skill. Most surgery (in my opinion) is not so difficult it couldn't be done after some practice. You may never develop hand eye coordination to make you a world class hand/spine surgeon, but you could probably do the bread and butter stuff unless you had some sort of tremor or hand deficiency...

My two cents...