Neurology/Neurosurgery

[premedmind]

Can someone give me advice on these fields as a DO applicant? How competitive are these fields? Obviously neurosurgery is more competitive than neurology, given the large difference in salary. How is the lifestyle? Any other advice/suggestions are appreciated. I am definitely interested in neurology and am curious about neurosurgery, although it seems extremely intense from what I have read.

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[st2205]

There are 11 DO neurosurgery programs, each taking maybe 1-2 people/year. That being said, the pool is rather small, so being able to get a good concensus on how competitive may not be as readily possible. A couple of DOs have matched into allopathic programs, but those have been very sporadic -- I can really only think of one in the past few years. Also, neurosurgery is competitive for more reasons than just salary. Your lifestyle with will vary according to many variables, none of which will be the fact that you're a DO. If you peruse the neurology or neurosurgery forums you can get a better idea.

 

[MossPoh]

It is good to explore, but neurology and neurosurgery are completly different fields. Most neurosurgeons I've met were always really interested in surgery first.

Neurology is not difficult to get at all. Just study hard and do well on boards, unless you already took step 1. In which case, that'd be good information to have to gauge your level of competiveness for something like NS.

Lifestyle of NS is crap for most people. Neurosurgery is one of the furthest things from a lifestyle type specialty. You can sit back and do spine surgeries all day, but then you have to deal with back pain patients all day as well, which is considered an actual level of hell by many people. I truly think the best neurosurgeons who are happiest feel like they were born for that position and nothing else. It just calls them. If they HAD to pick another specialty, it'd probably be surgical or maybe interventional rads or something. That is just the vibe I've gotten from a bunch of them and have heard a few say. Small N, but I'd be surprised if I heard a happy neurosurgeon say they really loved dermatology, anesthesiology, or some other "lifestyle" (subjective of course) specialty as much as NS when they were a student.

 

[dozitgetchahi]

Can someone give me advice on these fields as a DO applicant? How competitive are these fields? Obviously neurosurgery is more competitive than neurology, given the large difference in salary. How is the lifestyle? Any other advice/suggestions are appreciated. I am definitely interested in neurology and am curious about neurosurgery, although it seems extremely intense from what I have read.

Bottom line: the medical students who ultimately become surgeons of any stripe tend to be a totally different breed of people than those who end up going into other most other specialties. There are a few arenas in medicine (pathology, psychiatry, and surgery, for instance) that seem to attract highly specific personality types, and neurosurgeons seem to occupy the extreme "hardcore" edge of the surgical personality gamut. As another poster pointed out, you really have to be interested in surgery first and foremost to make that specialty choice work.

And in the case of something like neurosurg, I'm not even sure the high salary compensates for the lifestyle. You literally might not have any time to enjoy your money anyway.