jobs of a surgeon

[aric_taylor2000]

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Hi. I am interested in medicine. If i do, I think I would chose surgery. My first question is, do surgeons only work on operating people, or do they see patients, vist and help in the ER? My second one is about specializing. I have always been interested in pediactrics, so to specialize in pediactric surgery you would need med school, 5 years as a general surgeon, then you could go onto ped surgery, is this correct? And after you have your pediactric sugery you can take another sub specialty like pediactric orthpedic surgery ?

thank you for your help.

 

[Winged Scapula]

Originally posted by aric_taylor2000
Hi. I am interested in medicine. If i do, I think I would chose surgery. My first question is, do surgeons only work on operating people, or do they see patients, vist and help in the ER? My second one is about specializing. I have always been interested in pediactrics, so to specialize in pediactric surgery you would need med school, 5 years as a general surgeon, then you could go onto ped surgery, is this correct? And after you have your pediactric sugery you can take another sub specialty like pediactric orthpedic surgery ?

thank you for your help.

Surgeons do much more than simply operate on patients. Like most other physicians, they see patients pre- and post-op in the office/clinic, round on them when hospitalized, assist other physicians in seeing patients on a consultation basis and assess them in the ER. In addition, at many trauma centers, surgeons form the primary response team for incoming traumas regardless of whether or not the patient has an acute surgical need.

A Pediatric surgeon currently completes medical school, a 5+ general surgery residency (I add the plus because many of the more competitive subspecialties will prefer you have some experience in the laboratory doing research during residency) and then onto Ped surgery training.

However, a Pediatric Orthopaedic surgeon would specialize in ORTHOPAEDICS, not general surgery, before doing additional training in pediatric ortho.

 

[aric_taylor2000]

thanks,
so i would do surgery, then specialize in orthopedics, then go onto pediactric specialty?

 

[maxheadroom]

no, you'd do a five year residency in orthopedics and then a one or two year peds ortho fellowship.

 

[Winged Scapula]

Originally posted by aric_taylor2000
thanks,
so i would do surgery, then specialize in orthopedics, then go onto pediactric specialty?

No - you would do an Ortho residency followed by the Peds training (which is different than a Pediatric surgery fellowship which does not do Ortho - you'd need an Ortho program).

 

[LuckyMD2b]

Originally posted by aric_taylor2000
Hi. I am interested in medicine. If i do, I think I would chose surgery. My first question is, do surgeons only work on operating people, or do they see patients, vist and help in the ER? My second one is about specializing. I have always been interested in pediactrics, so to specialize in pediactric surgery you would need med school, 5 years as a general surgeon, then you could go onto ped surgery, is this correct? And after you have your pediactric sugery you can take another sub specialty like pediactric orthpedic surgery ?

thank you for your help.

I'm a student and I think that I'm interested in pediatric surgery as well.

I was under the impression that ped's ortho and ped surgery were not very much alike, other than the fact that your patients are younger than 21. peds surgery is deals more with congenital defects, hernias, and some oncology. While I suspect that peds ortho would deal more with traumatic injuries to the skeletal system. Is that right?

Also, I've also noticed that there are only 36 peds' surgery fellowships in North America. Is there any specific reason why there are so few. Is it impossible to get one of these postions with out an extra 2 years of research in residency? Are all the pediatric surgeons working in academic positions in bigger cities?

 

[Surgdude]

LuckyMD2b,

You are right about the difference between peds ortho and peds surg. One is purely ortho related stuff and the other is more of the general surgical aspects of peds.

I think that there are only about 100-120 peds surg spots in the US each year. Obviously, there is a very limited number of programs, so 36 sounds about right. Your could check FRIEDA on the AAMC site if you wanted to know for sure.

I think that there are a few reasons for having the smaller number of fellowship positions. First, pediatric surgery isn't like adult surgery in the fact that there is really a lot less pediatric surgery to be done out there. For that reason, I think that the peds surgery establishment tries to protect itself by not inundating the market with a ton of new peds surgeons.

Does getting a fellowship at a peds program require research in residency? I think that this is almost invariably, yes. First, I think it is poplular enough that there is often many more applicants than there are spots. Therefore, one must do something to differentiate themselves from the next applicant. If you are interested in it, you should definitely try to position yourself at a university program that has active research under pediatric surgeons. Also, it is important to try to get into a program with politically strong peds surgeons. Since it is such a small group of people, they pretty much know everyone in that group through conferences, etc. Probably more than any surgical subspecialty, there is strong dependence upon who you know and who is writing your letters. I would check with the head of your peds surg department wherever you are doing med school to find out which programs are the best to apply to.

Finally, there are a lot of peds surgeons that work at community hospitals, they are just the larger ones. My community residency program used to have 3 up until a year ago, and now has only 2, but is looking for a third. Actually, comparing the university program that I graduated med school from and my current community residency program, we are actually quite a bit busier than the university. We are helped by having an affiliated pediatric hospital with PICU and NICU support on site with our general hospital. And that isn't just relegating them to doing solely peds hernias for the rest of their lives, either. They do the entire spectrum of patients--oncologic, Hirschsprungs, malrotations, diaphragmatic hernias, TE fistulas, thoracic, pectus excavatum, etc.