Not a chance?

[Lostone latin]

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I am a 28 yo anesthesiologist who wants to change everything! My specialty, tired of listening to bips of the heart, and my country ( also tired of corruption and violence)! Reading the older posts I'm starting to guess that I have little chance to match, as I graduated 5 years ago, done residency in anesthesiology, but have no research( almost no one does in my country), only 1 month observing in Miami, in my area. What do you guys think? I really want to enter psychiatry, but don't want to spend a huge amount of money in something that has no future, as I 'm starting the Steps this year.....Thanks!😳

 

[DebDynamite]

Do you speak Spanish? If you really get to know (shadow if possible) some of the people inside a department where there are many patients who speak Spanish, then I would say you have a shot. But, you must do well on all the steps also ( or at least, pass all of them including step three). It can't hurt to try. Just be realistic in your application process.

 

[psychattending]

I am a 28 yo anesthesiologist who wants to change everything! My specialty, tired of listening to bips of the heart, and my country ( also tired of corruption and violence)! Reading the older posts I'm starting to guess that I have little chance to match, as I graduated 5 years ago, done residency in anesthesiology, but have no research( almost no one does in my country), only 1 month observing in Miami, in my area. What do you guys think? I really want to enter psychiatry, but don't want to spend a huge amount of money in something that has no future, as I 'm starting the Steps this year.....Thanks!😳

A potential problem you might run into is the time since you graduated medical school. A lot of programs will pass on people who are >5 years from medical school. You appear to have been practicing medicine during those 5 years so this might help with some schools. You will help yourself a lot if you do well on your USMLEs. Another problem you might have is that you are changing specialties. You will need to convince people that your change of specialties is a heartfelt one and not a reflection of your desire to practice medicine in the US. While your application will have several challenges, it still is possible to reach your goal.

 

[Lostone latin]

A potential problem you might run into is the time since you graduated medical school. A lot of programs will pass on people who are >5 years from medical school. You appear to have been practicing medicine during those 5 years so this might help with some schools. You will help yourself a lot if you do well on your USMLEs. Another problem you might have is that you are changing specialties. You will need to convince people that your change of specialties is a heartfelt one and not a reflection of your desire to practice medicine in the US. While your application will have several challenges, it still is possible to reach your goal.

That's one of my biggest fears! Convince people that I'm in love with psychiatry, ever since I started working in Pain Dept! I spent these last 5 years doing nothing but work and study, but I am really tired of doing something I don't want anymore. I'm facing this as the last chance to do these changes while I'm still young...I guess...😎

I would like to do some research before applying but I will have to do from here, as I have to keep working , or anyone knows a way to research in US and have a salary, without the ECFMG certificate ?

 

[belle54321]

You definitely can find research without ECFMG certificate. ECFMG certificate is really of no use except when you are applying for residency or license.

Have you thought about getting training as a psychiatrist in your own country first or at least some mental health experience? You might be a better candidate if you are already a psychiatrist in your own country; otherwise, you will be lumped with other IMGs who see psychiatry as being an "easy" specialty to get into.

 

[Leo Aquarius]

If you are tired of your country, and tired of the setting of an operating room, and love your Pain Clinic, then why not do a pain fellowship as an anesthesiologist? There's nothing in what you describe that speaks to a real desire to pursue psychiatry. Besides, how can you love something if you've not really done it? I think you're in love with the things that pursuing psychiatry can bring, but not psychiatry itself.

 

[Lostone latin]

Look, obviously I am not mentioning all the reasons that have made me decide to ,after all those years ,change my specialty! Since the begining I was in a horrible doubt between a few specialties, but due to a few problems I could not leave the residency, and than life takes you to places we can't always control... :/ In my country, during our college years we have a lot of practice, and that included psychiatry.... One of my biggest passions ever since! I am always reading psychiatry publications and shadow the psychiatrists at the hospital where I work...
I Absolutely love medicine, science, most of all, and that is not the reality here! All I want is to practice all I ever studied...

 

[michaelrack]

! All I want is to practice all I ever studied...

as others have mentioned/asked, is doing psych in your own country an option?

 

[Lostone latin]

as others have mentioned/asked, is doing psych in your own country an option?

Actually, I want to return after finishing residency, PhD, etc... For me there is no point in restart my studies in a place that will not give me the chance to do research... If it is to study all over again ( to enter in a psychiatry residency), become a resident again😱, I decided to do in the best place I can imagine!

 

[whopper]

So long as you pass USMLEs, have US citizenship, and are articulate in English, I think you got a decent shot.

You got to (edit: two, my spelling has gotten worse since using MS Word!) things that are out of the norm that will not make most programs want to go out of their way to get you, but will make several programs do so...

Bilingual in English and Spanish (maybe more)?
And you got an anesthesiology background.

The reason for the first is obvious: There are several areas of the country where the only language spoken by several people is Spanish and several of the doctors in those communities don't speak it. You could be a boon to a hospital in such an area such as Florida, Texas, California, New Mexico, New York City, etc.

The anesthesiology thing: it's rare, but when it happens you want anesthesiology involved in a case where some patients will not be sedated despite mega-doses of medications. There are a few existing psychiatrists with an anesthesiology background, and when patients get agitated, these guys can always take such a patient down.

On occasion, you get a patient where they are dangerously agitated and not calmed down or sedated no matter what you give them. I've seen this happen a few times--e.g. Thorazine 400 IM, Haldol 30 IM, Ativan 4 IM, and the guy is still up at at 'em, swinging punches.

I'd definitely want at least one person in the dept with such a background to be called upon when such a difficult case occurs, so that person could look into what could be done outside the usual psychiatric choice of meds. When we psychiatrists call upon anesthesiology in these tough cases, they often times are too timid to assist us because our training is so diverse and we usually don't interact with each other.

 

[nitemagi]

So long as you pass USMLEs, have US citizenship, and are articulate in English, I think you got a decent shot.

You got to things that are out of the norm that will not make most programs want to go out of their way to get you, but will make several programs do so...

Bilingual in English and Spanish (maybe more)?
And you got an anesthesiology background.

The reason for the first is obvious: There are several areas of the country where the only language spoken by several people is Spanish and several of the doctors in those communities don't speak it. You could be a boon to a hospital in such an area such as Florida, Texas, California, New Mexico, New York City, etc.

The anesthesiology thing: it's rare, but when it happens you want anesthesiology involved in a case where some patients will not be sedated despite mega-doses of medications. There are a few existing psychiatrists with an anesthesiology background, and when patients get agitated, these guys can always take such a patient down.

On occasion, you get a patient where they are dangerously agitated and not calmed down or sedated no matter what you give them. I've seen this happen a few times--e.g. Thorazine 400 IM, Haldol 30 IM, Ativan 4 IM, and the guy is still up at at 'em, swinging punches.

I'd definitely want at least one person in the dept with such a background to be called upon when such a difficult case occurs, so that person could look into what could be done outside the usual psychiatric choice of meds. When we psychiatrists call upon anesthesiology in these tough cases, they often times are too timid to assist us because our training is so diverse and we usually don't interact with each other.

Plus in ECT.

 

[whopper]

Yep, you might not need the anesthesiologist when you are the one, though in America, you'd have done residency in it.

I've only had two cases so far where I medicated the patient to the point of not wanting to do anymore and the patient was still swinging.

In one case the guy had seriously bad bipolar disorder and then later suffered a head trauma (something-forgot what, sliced his head open, he ended up getting a glass eye, well I think it was glass, I knew it was fake.). The guy would run into the wall and smash his head into it on the psychiatric unit, sometimes his glass eye would pop out. He was being given Haldol 5 IM Q hour about 16 shots a day and that was the only thing that got him to the point where he was no longer hitting his head against the wall, and yes pretty much everything you can think of that was conventional was tried. Even on that dosage he was on a 1-to-1. The guy was still swinging and had to be in restraints most of the day, even with the meds.

(Edit: I never knew what stabilized the guy later on if that ever happened. We transferred him to the long-term care facility because we knew we would not get this under control in the short-term acute facility)

The other, well Thorazine 400 IM was the only thing that got him sedated, and even then he still wasn't asleep and tried to fight it off by stepping into a cold shower and then running out of his room, sedated as heck but still manic and barely able to walk but cussing us out each moment though this time at least not awake enough to attack anyone. In about 2-3 hours he was awake enough to attack people again.

I asked the weekend psychiatrist on-call "did you have Rick X over the weekend?"
"James, I don't think saying I had him would be the correct words. Rick X had me."

(edit: what got the 2nd patient under control was lithium. Hardly anything else worked. One guy in the hospital had this guy so dosed up on antipsychotics he looked like a Parkinson's patient with a reptilian stare, EPS, but still was manic. The problem was that he refused it because he was one of those manics that enjoyed the mania. We had to wait till a court order that took 3 weeks for forced lithium, all the while this guy was swinging at patients and staff and attempting to inappropriately touch females on the order of every hour, every day unless he got the mega-dose of Thorazine.)