Neurology/neurosurgery

[Fizbee03]

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Hi all, I’m not sure if this is the right place to post (please redirect me if so!) but I had some questions for the Neuro people out there. I’m a first yr vet student at a state school and recently became really interested in neurology/neurosurgery after shadowing at my schools teaching hospital. Here are my questions (bear with me here):

1. I know residency is 3yrs, and typically you need 1+ rotating or specialty internships as well. How many internship years did you need before you were accepted? I had to move for vet school, and I don’t necessarily want to move states again, but will if I have to. Is moving away again something I should expect to happen due to the competitiveness?

2. My grades are currently good, ~3.8 GPA, and I’m participating in research this summer on spinal disease with a boarded neurologist. Is class rank something that is weighted heavily, or is general GPA more important? How would you recommend I keep in touch with this person so I can receive an LOR from them in the future? I go to a very competitive school where most of our class ends up specializing.

3. Due to the field being kinda niche, I’ve had trouble finding accurate info about what the work/life balance looks like and just a general day in the life of a neurologist. Do you work in academia or private practice? Do you find you are on call a lot? How much surgery do you actually get to do, and what cases do you see the most (I know IVDD is a big one)?
TIA for your responses, I’m just a lowly first year and a big dreamer, I’m 100% set on specializing and want to know now so I can start early and be a competitive applicant.

 

[JaynaAli]

@VIN-Foundation is neuro I think? Also @nyanko though idk how often they log in anymore if at all.

Hopefully they or someone else can answer your more neuro-specific questions, but it’s extremely common for people to have to move around in the internship and residency path. Programs are competitive, and while you could decide only to apply to places in one geographic rotation, you might have to ultimately decide which you want more, to specialize or not to move. A lot of places don’t particularly like to “keep” their students as interns. Some do, but it’s very common to move for internships. More places seem to like to keep interns on as residents. It’s not impossible to do all your training at once place but it isn’t really the norm. And I think it behooves people to learn from others and see other ways of doing things anyway.

Class rank tend to mean more, just because some schools inflate grades compared to others. I had a 3.2 GPA but was right around 50th percentile in my class, but at the school where I did my residency, I know for a fact that a 3.2 GPA was the bottom 10-20% of the class. And schools like Illinois do these mega courses and limited grades. So class rank “evens the playing field” a bit and you can see how you stacked against your peers a little better. But total GPA still does matter…unless you’re at a school that doesn’t do grades or rank and then why do we even talk about it at all haha.

 

[Fizbee03]

@VIN-Foundation is neuro I think? Also @nyanko though idk how often they log in anymore if at all.

Hopefully they or someone else can answer your more neuro-specific questions, but it’s extremely common for people to have to move around in the internship and residency path. Programs are competitive, and while you could decide only to apply to places in one geographic rotation, you might have to ultimately decide which you want more, to specialize or not to move. A lot of places don’t particularly like to “keep” their students as interns. Some do, but it’s very common to move for internships. More places seem to like to keep interns on as residents. It’s not impossible to do all your training at once place but it isn’t really the norm. And I think it behooves people to learn from others and see other ways of doing things anyway.

Class rank tend to mean more, just because some schools inflate grades compared to others. I had a 3.2 GPA but was right around 50th percentile in my class, but at the school where I did my residency, I know for a fact that a 3.2 GPA was the bottom 10-20% of the class. And schools like Illinois do these mega courses and limited grades. So class rank “evens the playing field” a bit and you can see how you stacked against your peers a little better. But total GPA still does matter…unless you’re at a school that doesn’t do grades or rank and then why do we even talk about it at all haha.

Thank you very much, this is very helpful! It’s more the annoyance of moving all my belongings + cats + my partner that makes me reluctant to move far again. I would love to go back to where I did my undergrad tho, so I will def apply to places other than where I’m at now.

 

[VIN-Foundation]

Hi,

Neurologists here, at an academic teaching hospital (University of Tennessee). We take a neurology resident every year, so I'm pretty familiar with that process and in fact we are interviewing resident applicants right now.

You will need a rotating internship, so that should be your first goal. If you don't match to a residency after a rotating internship, you generally try to get a neurology specialty internship and then apply again. I would say about half of our residents did a specialty internship.

Regarding moving, while it's possible you could get an internship and then a residency at the school you attend, that's usually unrealistic and maybe not even a good idea.

GPA/class rank are important for most programs. Realize it's a competition. If you have 2 otherwise identical applicants, one was top of the class and one was bottom of the class ... who would you hire?

But how important academics are varies from program to program. And most will value letters of reference as much or more than GPA/class rank.

Regarding, surgery ... about half of my caseload is neurosurgery. Thoracolumbar hemis are the most common, with cervical slots being number 2. Spinal tumors, spinal stabilizations, craniotomies, VP shunts, lumbosacrals, Chiari decompressions ... these are roughly equal in numbers I would say. Peripheral nerve surgery is rare, other than muscle/nerve biopsy.

There used to be quite a few neurologists that didn't do surgery. That's MUCH less common these days since most neurologists are going into private practice, where they want you to do surgery.

In neurology, emergencies come with the territory, including emergency surgeries. It's pretty common for us to do a few surgeries on weekends and occasionally on a week night. Seizure patients and brain patients are also common emergencies.

I once was on call 24/7 for over a year, because I was the only neurologist. The lesson there is don't be the only neurologist at a practice, if at all possible. Currently, I'm on call for a week (7 days) 12 times a year because we have 2 other neurologists and I'm also serving as hospital director so I have less weeks on clinics.

Hope this helps and just let us know if you have more questions.

 

[breezywonton]

Hi,

Neurologists here, at an academic teaching hospital (University of Tennessee).

Dr T is this u 🤣

 

[battie]

Dr T is this u 🤣

Check the signature!

 

[breezywonton]

Check the signature!

OH IT IS haha thank you Dr. Thomas for making neurophysio less painful last semester (still not a neuro girly sorry)

 

[VIN-Foundation]

OH IT IS haha thank you Dr. Thomas for making neurophysio less painful last semester (still not a neuro girly sorry)

That's OK. Somebody has to do all that other stuff.
🙂

 

[Fizbee03]

Hi,

Neurologists here, at an academic teaching hospital (University of Tennessee). We take a neurology resident every year, so I'm pretty familiar with that process and in fact we are interviewing resident applicants right now.

You will need a rotating internship, so that should be your first goal. If you don't match to a residency after a rotating internship, you generally try to get a neurology specialty internship and then apply again. I would say about half of our residents did a specialty internship.

Regarding moving, while it's possible you could get an internship and then a residency at the school you attend, that's usually unrealistic and maybe not even a good idea.

GPA/class rank are important for most programs. Realize it's a competition. If you have 2 otherwise identical applicants, one was top of the class and one was bottom of the class ... who would you hire?

But how important academics are varies from program to program. And most will value letters of reference as much or more than GPA/class rank.

Regarding, surgery ... about half of my caseload is neurosurgery. Thoracolumbar hemis are the most common, with cervical slots being number 2. Spinal tumors, spinal stabilizations, craniotomies, VP shunts, lumbosacrals, Chiari decompressions ... these are roughly equal in numbers I would say. Peripheral nerve surgery is rare, other than muscle/nerve biopsy.

There used to be quite a few neurologists that didn't do surgery. That's MUCH less common these days since most neurologists are going into private practice, where they want you to do surgery.

In neurology, emergencies come with the territory, including emergency surgeries. It's pretty common for us to do a few surgeries on weekends and occasionally on a week night. Seizure patients and brain patients are also common emergencies.

I once was on call 24/7 for over a year, because I was the only neurologist. The lesson there is don't be the only neurologist at a practice, if at all possible. Currently, I'm on call for a week (7 days) 12 times a year because we have 2 other neurologists and I'm also serving as hospital director so I have less weeks on clinics.

Hope this helps and just let us know if you have more questions.

This is so insanely helpful, it has been so hard to find reliable info on what neurologists do. Thank you! You’ve convinced me even more to follow the neuro path😎