Need help deciding

[drtroy]

Hi everybody I am new here and need some advice. I am caught between a rock and a hard place. I wanna be a radiologist, but I do not know if I wanna specialize into interventional or just to go into general. What is the major difference between the two? Which one has more call? More hours? Which would be better if family is very important? Which has a higher demand? Financial differences? And another note, does anybody know how much a radiology residency pays? Thanks for any help on this.

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[Pinkertinkle]

Radiology residency pays crap just like every other residency. You'll get plenty of exposure to interventional and general during residency. Worry about matching into diag rads first.

 

[physicsnerd42]

Residencies typically pay on the order of $40,000 to $45,000 per year.

 

[Bertelman]

Try searching the Radiology forum for your answers.

 

[Wizard of Oz]

Radiology is a competative residency, and you will first need to do well in medical school before you can "choose" to become a radiologist. It has to choose you before you can choose it. Lifestyle and pay are generally good (hence the competativeness). Demand is good now. Ten years from now, who knows?

I would not focus on a silly item such as resident pay. It is not uncommon for a school to pay residents in ALL of their specialties the exact same amount simply to keep students from being lured by an immediate financial incentive.

Your profile says that you are currently pre-med. Here's what you do:

1. Get into medical school
2. Study during your first two years
3. Do well on your USMLE step 1
4. Please your superiors during your third year
5. Decide what you want to do for a residency

Unfortunately at this point it won't matter whether you were interested in rads during your pre-med career or just found out about it and now think that it is really cool. The better student will get the more competative match regardless of previous hopes/dreams.

6. Try to do some research or extra-curricular stuff in your field of interest
7. Get good recommendations
8. Apply for and match a 1-year preliminary year
9. Apply for and match a 4-year diagnostic radiology residency

And then, ten years from now

10. Decide if you want to do a fellowship such as interventional rads or not

As far as I know, interventional is always a fellowship which follows five years of PGY. You can't do interventional w/o being board certified in diagnostic.

Hopefully you catch the point that I am trying to make--many many ducks must be shot down in a row first before you arrive at the point where you are asking the question here. In sum, however, interventional rads vs. diag rads is like asking if internal medicine is better than cardiology. To do cardiology, you have to have done medicine first, so either way you still have to do internal med.

Interventional--prolly better pay but also higher malpractice. If you want cash, specialize in mammography.

If family is very important, go to PA school.

 

[WhoisJohnGalt]

Hopefully you catch the point that I am trying to make--many many ducks must be shot down in a row first before you arrive at the point where you are asking the question here. In sum, however, interventional rads vs. diag rads is like asking if internal medicine is better than cardiology. To do cardiology, you have to have done medicine first, so either way you still have to do internal med.

Interventional--prolly better pay but also higher malpractice. If you want cash, specialize in mammography.

If family is very important, go to PA school.

Ditto what this poster said. You are not, in fact, caught between any rocks or hard places. You are faced with a very difficult WALL of getting INTO medical school, much less doing exceptionally well in medical school, doing exceptionally well on your steps 1 and 2, geting radiology INTERVIEWS, getting a radiology residency, and THEN maybe thinking about a radiology fellowship. There is a reason for the separate forums for pre-allo, allo, and specific residencies. While this question might be relevant to, say, a radiology resident, it is a pointless issue for you to concern yourself with now. Worry about the MCAT and your AMCAS right now