•••quote:•••Originally posted by Juice:
•Definitely do a prelim surgery year, or maybe transitional. Kimberly, a medicine prelim??? My friends who headed into fields such as rads, rad onc, and anes, all hated their ward medicine months with a passion. One of my friends logged 400 cases as a prelim surg intern at a community program in CT. Over 100 in his ortho month alone. You will place lots of lines in the OR, and yes, you can learn these your first year of anesthesia, but if you pick a good busy surgery program you will do perhaps 50-100. I have seen first year anes residents struggle with IJs and radial art lines, often delaying cases. Plus, if you ever wanted to do a pain fellowship, you would have an easier time getting OR priveledges for many of the new invasive techniques these guys do, and bill big bucks for. i.e.- pain pump placement. As far as a program, pick a large community one. The more prestigious surgery interns get very little cases, let alone the prelims.
However, if you decide you do not want to bust your ass too much, just do a transitional year with a heavy emphasis on surgery.•••••The choice to do a Medicine vs a Surgical Prelim year is highly individual. I CAN tell you that those I've talked to doing Prelim Surgical years before going into non-surgical fields (including Anesth) HATED it. One of the reasons they chose Anesth was for the hours - they hated the surgical hours, the surgical mentality, the fact that they DIDN'T get the opportunity to be in the OR (obviously this varies a great deal from program to program; I wholeheartedly agree with the advice to go to a community program for more OR experience), the Trauma rotations, etc. While I certainly understand the loathing of Medicine rotations, given the pleothora of Critical Care/Pulmonology there, most Anesth find it interesting, esp. MICU rotations.
If the original poster is really interested in being in the OR (and frankly I'm not sure there is any guarantee that an Anesth resident doing a Surgical Prelim will be doing all the lines, etc. in the OR - what about the Anesth resident or the student on that service. In my experience, THEY are the ones doing those procedures, not the Surgical intern.) then perhaps a Surgical year would be a good idea - provided he knows what he's getting into. My comment was merely wondering why when most others choose the different path.
