OMFS Career after Medical School..

[gaslight]

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[Bereno]

So you put in 4 years of DO, 1-2 years for gen surg, 3-4 years of dental school, plus 4 more years for OMFS residency... That works out to 12-14 years before working. Additionally, the added cost of dental school on top of the cost of med school must be taken into consideration. Assuming you take loans, you could easily be sitting on $700k+ before setting foot in a real job. This also means that if you want to buy a practice, you could be sitting on even more (possibly $1.5mil easily). I don't know your financial situation, but this sounds like a financial nightmare/suicide. The real cherry here is that you might not even match, and would be stuck with two doctorate degrees that you do not want (DO and DDS/DMD). I would look into ENT if surgery of the head and neck is your thing. If you are just looking for private practice lifestyle, then possibly consider just dental school. Otherwise, I would honestly take a good long second look at the medical specialties before going down such a long and costly path to OMFS. Just my $0.02.

 

[CMistry]

You will not be able to skip a year of a 4yr program. Only 4-5 months are spent on general surgery as a 4-yr OMFS trainee; you spend additional time on anesthesia (5 months), ENT/plastics/neurosurgery, and other rotations you that will not be able to complete during a 1-year medical internship. I understand you need the year for medical licensure, but you do not need it to be a practicing OMFS.

I know people who have gone through medical school first and then become interested in OMFS. A few programs have curriculums in place for these students (UAB and Harvard come to mind, though you will be hard pressed to find much information about these tracks). Of course you must be a good applicant with a strong class ranking and competitive USMLE score. I also have a co-resident who went to medical school, then dental school, and then matched into OMFS. He realized he wanted to do OMFS in his 3rd year of medical school and has been working at it ever since. He paved his own path but it has been very difficult and is certainly the long road. If you have more questions about his specific situation you can PM me.

Good luck! OMFS is a fantastic profession, worth every bit of the struggle IMO.

 

[yappy]

Have you looked into ENT?

 

[zammyd]

^I have also heard ENT surgeons do similar things as OMFS. I would look into that as well.

 

[allantois]

ENT isn't exactly a DO friendly specialty.

 

[Mad Jack]

You'll have to contact programs directly, this is more of a case-by-case, anecdotal sort of thing where each program has their individual way of doing things.

 

[allantois]

Here's someone interesting I found:

http://www.oralmaxillofacialsurgery.vcu.edu/residency/residents/amber-johnson/

She was probably in Nova's 6 year DO/DMD program (which btw is not intended for that purpose).

 

[capnamerica]

Here's someone interesting I found:

http://www.oralmaxillofacialsurgery.vcu.edu/residency/residents/amber-johnson/

She was probably in Nova's 6 year DO/DMD program (which btw is not intended for that purpose).

I can confirm that she was. Funny enough, in speaking to someone in that dual degree track at Nova, they mentioned about 70% of the dual track students were interested in pursuing OMFS.

 

[gryffindor]

Totally my opinion, I don't know of anyone personally who did this route. I'm amazed at how regularly this question gets asked on here. 4 years of med school isn't going to be excellent prep for the basic sciences in dental school. You are better off ending your DO career now and starting dental school ASAP if you really want to go the OMS route. If you are a good dental student, you will probably have a better chance of getting in an OMS program somewhere at some point in your career than being a DO trying create some special track to OMS. You could also do OMS internships after dental school if you didn't get in right away. There are many dentist jobs out there where you can extract teeth to your heart's content. My point is that being a dentist is going to open up your career path toward doing more OMS procedures and experiences even if you don't match immediately. There are also residencies in Dental Anesthesia if that interests you.

 

[gaslight]

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[free99]

Of the dozens of medical socialites and sub specialties there must be one that you would find to be a good fit. I can't imagine going through medical school then starting right up on the admissions process of dental school. Seems like a awful way to spend all of your twenties and some of your thirties, just to have a chance at omfs, when you have all of the field of medicine at your finger tips. Wish you the best of luck in whatever your choose.

 

[gaslight]

Of the dozens of medical socialites and sub specialties there must be one that you would find to be a good fit. I can't imagine going through medical school then starting right up on the admissions process of dental school. Seems like a awful way to spend all of your twenties and some of your thirties, just to have a chance at omfs, when you have all of the field of medicine at your finger tips. Wish you the best of luck in whatever your choose.

Definitely agree that it seems crazy! That's why I wanted to ask about the medical pathway because I don't think I can convince myself to drop out when I am halfway through... Maybe what we could do is build a list of all the programs that supposedly have taken students from medicine and trained them in OMS. So far I've heard Harvard, Louisville, UTSW, and Baylor. Any others out there anecdotally? If we get a solid list going myself and future applicants could contact the program coordinators to see if there any info. Seems to be a lot of interest since it comes up often. Any other input from other students is much appreciated!

 

[pjscholar]

Dude--going med school (4 yrs), then a surgical residency (4 yrs?) THEN all the back to dental school (4 yrs) only to battle it out for another 4 years of stress only to then do another extremely demanding and stressful OS residency? That makes my balls hurt just thinking about it...

I thought dental school plus a 2 year residency was a lot!

 

[allantois]

Here's a guy who has done it: http://nyulangone.org/doctors/1164462867/eduardo-d-rodriguez

Dentistry, then medicine, then two residencies (OMFS then Plastics). Long path but now he's at the top of his field: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/unprec...rgery-firefighter-hope-life/story?id=35218667

He went to school at the time when it cost peanuts. Today, this would mean financial suicide.

 

[yappy]

I'm not the type of person to regularly give out direct advice because I believe people know themselves best, however:Don't pursue dentistry!

find a route from the plethora of diverse medical specialties, with varied practice settings, that will match your professional goals and do not look back!

I have shadowed some ENT and I thought it was pretty cool but I never found it as cool as oral surgery. I realize that in residency they have overlapping scopes, but in my shadowing and research I think the two are different out in private practice. I wasn't a huge fan of all the sinusitis and allergies that they saw, although I must admit that FESS is a pretty cool procedure. I really liked the fact that OMFS does their own anesthesia as well. Seems like a good tool to make more money and also stay away from the hospital as you can sedate your patients in office without an anesthesia provider. It also seemed like the ENTs take much more call, and end up going to the hospital a lot more although maybe this is just dependent on the doctor. The poster above mentioned the fact that DOs rarely go into ENT... This is definitely true. While OMFS is also competitive, at least I won't have to worry about the letters behind my name when applying to programs. Plus, I hope the medical training will help me excel in dental school (at least the basic sciences). Other posters mentioned the debt. This is probably the biggest hurdle for me and my biggest fear about committing to the long road. When I imagine being close to 1 mil. in debt I can feel my blood pressure rising. Thank you for all the feedback so far, there have been many great points! Any other suggestions? I have heard of several people going into OMFS from the MD route (via UAB, Baylor, Louisville,etc.) but only through anecdotes on SDN. I can't seem to find any info on these type of setups. Anybody have any experience or information about these routes? Thanks so much, SDN may be full of negativity sometimes, but there are tons of genuinely helpful people on here!

 

[DavesNotHere]

nevermind.

 

[setdoc7]

The chief resident at the OMFS program at my hospital did med school first. But he is an MD. Working out for him as this is a 6 year program.

 

[gryffindor]

Do a search for Dental Anesthesia residency programs. I think graduates do all sorts of things. Some do only dental anesthesia traveling to offices, some still do clinical dentistry while also doing anesthesia.

 

[srb711]

Do a search for Dental Anesthesia residency programs. I think graduates do all sorts of things. Some do only dental anesthesia traveling to offices, some still do clinical dentistry while also doing anesthesia.

If dental anesthesia is appealing at all to the OP, then they should just go in to anesthesia. Plenty of DO grads go in to anesthesia... no sense in adding dental school in to the equation.

Now as far as the med school to 1 year gen surg to dental school to OMFS route goes, one of my co-residents did this. He did a full year of general surgery and then the full 4 years of dental school and matched in to a 4 year program. Our program director is asking CODA to look in to allowing him to do a 3 year program (31 months of OMFS and 5 months of anesthesia).