picking a specialty?

[MerDer7726]

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Hi, I was a little confused and this may be an idiotic question. When you are starting a surgical residency do you need to know your surgical subspecialty? If you start your general surgery program, and you end up wanting to be a cardio surgeon, do you need to start your intern year and residency over in a different program? If so, do most people know what type of surgery they want to practice by the end of med school?? Thanks.

 

[tortelliniboy]

Depends on if you're going categorical for a specific surgical subspecialty/integrated or are going the gen surg -> fellowship route to CT/plastics/etc

 

[MerDer7726]

Depends on if you're going categorical for a specific surgical subspecialty/integrated or are going the gen surg -> fellowship route to CT/plastics/etc

So I could do a gen surg program and follow it with a fellowship?

 

[gyngyn]

So I could do a gen surg program and follow it with a fellowship?

Yes.

 

[bc65]

It depends on what you mean by surgical subspecialty. Cardiothoracic, vascular, pediatric, and plastics are all done as fellowships after a full general surgery residency. You would typically apply while you were in your general surgery residency. Cardiothoracic and plastics can also be done as integrated programs that you match into as 4th year students.

Subspecialties such as ortho, urology, and ENT are separate fields that you match into in med school. The residents typically go straight through, although there's a lot of non-specific rotations in the first year or two, so if you were a general surgery resident who wanted to switch, in theory some programs might give you credit for a year of general surgery. I wouldn't count on that, however, as the intern rotations are usually carefully selected based on the specialty, so your internship experience might not have covered the specific experiences that a given specialty wanted their interns to have. Plus, you would have to find a residency in the field your were interested in that would be willing to take you.