Is it too late to consider anesthesia?

[168232]

---

Members don't see this ad.

I'm a 3Y med student with mediocre grades (mostly all B's, few A's) and a not so good board score (below national average). I was interested in primary care this whole time until I did my anesthesia rotation, which I totally enjoyed! I want to go into anesthesia now, but I'm afraid my lack of motivation to do competitively well in the past two years may prevent me from reaching that goal. What can I do for the remainder of my third year & part of 4th year to help my chances to get into an anesthesiology residency ? Or is it kinda too late now (I hope that's not the case!)?

 

[173291]

My suggestion: Do a Sub-AI in Anesthesia and get Honors. Get good letters of recommendation, particularly from your Anesthesia rotations and maybe an SICU rotation and/or a Medicine Sub-AI. Most importantly, take Step II early. Study your butt off for it and excel.

That's my two cents. Good luck!

 

[Dr Serenity]

I'm a 3Y med student with mediocre grades (mostly all B's, few A's) and a not so good board score (below national average). I was interested in primary care this whole time until I did my anesthesia rotation, which I totally enjoyed! I want to go into anesthesia now, but I'm afraid my lack of motivation to do competitively well in the past two years may prevent me from reaching that goal. What can I do for the remainder of my third year & part of 4th year to help my chances to get into an anesthesiology residency ? Or is it kinda too late now (I hope that's not the case!)?

First of all, congratulations for seeing the light! 😀

You're less than halfway through third year, and so I'll say that it's NOT too late to consider anesthesia. From what you're saying about grades, I'll assume you've made a few A's, and B's in the rest of your courses (I'm assuming that you haven't made any C's). That's FINE...you seem to have very solid grades. Keep up the good work.

As far as what you can do during the rest of third year...I'll pretty much say what you've probably heard a zillion times...work hard in your rotations, show enthusiasm, STUDY for your shelf exams and do as well as you can on them. You may want to consider doing a second rotation with the anesthesia department early on in fourth year (when I say that, I mean during the first 2-3 months of 4th year so you can be sure to get some letters from anesthesia faculty). If you haven't done surgery or OB/GYN yet, try if you can to get some interaction with the anesthesiologists while you're on those rotations.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "mediocre board scores" or by "scoring below the national average", but I'll go under the assumption that you passed Step I (but perhaps didn't do as well as you would have liked). It may be good for you to take Step II early on in 4th year...it will only be a help to you if you get a good score on Step II.

Hope this helps.

 

[amyl]

a great step two will make up for everything at most places.

 

[proman]

Are you really MD/PhD? That alone will get you interviews. There's almost no one applying to anesthesia with PhDs (lack of NIH funding, lack of mentors). And mostly Bs isn't mediocre.

 

[themont0]

Not that I would suggest it, but I out-of-the matched into anesthesia after two years of medicine residency....at age 40. It's never too late to do something you really want to do.

 

[168232]

thank you all for your comments! it really gives me some hope, and i'll definitely have to work my booty off for step II! the more i've been doing this anesthesiology rotation, the more i enjoy it 🙂