Orthopedic Surgery or Neurosurgery??

[Robin-jay]

Lol that book was so depressing. Dude finished his residency instead of spending it with his wife...

At least he has a wife.

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[Princeton Medical Student]

There should be some kind of federal law mandating ALL pre-meds and pre-med wannabes attend a lecture to hear this kind of truth.

Every student entering med school should have the mindset that it would be a privilege and an honor to spend the rest of his/her life serving as a generalist for inner city or rural population and making a barely livable wage doing it. Sadly, 80-90% of all entering pre-meds think they are going to end up as Chief of Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins and spending half their work week at the country club working on the golf handicap.

An ideal candidate to med school should want to do the above and nothing but the above. Same for law but replace it with public defense and public service law

 

[getdown]

But mid level encroachment is literally in that field

My answer was mostly tongue in cheek but I'll address your concern.

1. Mid level encroachment is happening in just about every medical field outside of surgery, but even then NPs are often utilized in surgical clinics and in ORs to assist surgeons with cloasing etc. So anesthesia is not alone. And with the all out push by the nursing association for greater independence of NPs, (in FM, psych, IM) this is bound to get worse before it gets better. The VA already allows for APRNs to practice independently without physician oversight.
2. A field's stability can always change apart from midlevel encroachment. Look at CT surgery and Neurosurgery. With the advent of interventional radiology and cardiology, the need for aneurysm clippings and CABGs have decreased. CT surgery was once a hot field, now look at it. A lot of CT surgeons are fighting to find patients. Why get cut when you can get a stent or PCI?
3. People have been bitching about CRNAs in Anesthesia and how the field is dying since the 1980s and us MDs still here. Jobs are still frequently available if you're willing to move and you still get paid quite well.
4. If you talk to a majority of CRNAs they don't want to practice independently because they don't want to deal with the liability or pay for malpractice coverage (though they still do have to get it) and most understand their limitations and gaps in knowledge. Only the vocal few in the AANA keep bringing this up.
5. No one can predict the future and at this premed level, it's silly to even consider this as you'll never know what you're going to end up doing let alone how that field will be 10-15 years down the line.