Radiology as a career choice

[Gadofosveset]

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Yes. Radiology has become increasingly uncompetitive in recent years. Your chances still aren't super high, but it's definitely possible, particularly at less desirable locations.

This sentiment needs some commentary.

"Increasingly uncompetitive" means that the top programs are no longer being simultaneously hit with 200 applications from candidates with 260+ and 5 publications. Those people are doing something else now... derm or something... personally I don't see that as a tremendous loss because some of them were not really meant to be rads but it was a smart ROAD thing to do in 2006-2011 (or thereabouts). Now the field has opened up because med students are all rushing somewhere else (derm? ED? Specialty surgery has always been competitive). Personally, I see this as an opportunity because some candidates who probably would have been good rads were getting shut out because of the massive flux of "smart money" resume padders.

But rads isn't an easy field either. I think of it almost as continuing medical school throughout residency. Constant reading, constant information recall, focused attention for hours on end. The "increasingly uncompetitive" does not mean I've suddenly dropped my standards to just anyone who want to apply. If one applies to rads, one is likely to get a resident spot because rads is currently facing a challenge of community resident mills that will take just about any live human. DO NOT APPLY TO THESE RESIDENCIES. They have low standards, teach poorly, and prioritize your workload over your education.

Apply to rads because you find it interesting and you can see making a career in imaging. I'm an academic radiologist, I love my job, and I think I get paid pretty decently. I was considering specialty surgery as a med student and had the scores and connections in M4 to land a place, but I went rads instead. I wasn't sure the OR would be as much fun in 10-15 years as I found it to be as an M3 and M4. I haven't regretted my decision in the slightest. The fact that rads doesn't carry the "prestige" it had in 2006-2010ish means absolutely nothing to me now. I just enjoy my job. If your whole goal in life is to make bank, then at the current time in US medical history, you need to be a specialist surgeon and you need to be ok with everything that comes with it. It's possible to make "bank" as a rad, but your life is going to be rough and it's going take you a while to get there. I wouldn't count on it. Not that you can count on anything in medicine.

Anyway, consider rads if you like constant intellectual stimulation, have excellent communication skills and are patient, if you don't need to be the center of attention and don't need constant validation, and if you have the simultaneous ability to focus for long long periods of time and still multitask effectively. If you think in terms of ROAD, consider something else. If you're not flexible in terms of where you can live after residency, be cautious (but be sure you don't switch into something just as bad).

Med students get very easily swayed by this or that rumor from their peers or this or that random comment from residents. Make the best choice for yourself. If I were not a radiologist, I would have chosen a surgical subspecialty or ED, but I'm glad I chose what I did.

 

[TrueAntagonist]

I held my breath when I clicked on this post because I expected yet another "radiology is going downhill" post.

I was pleasantly surprised. What a refreshingly positive post. Thank you for this. I'm sure there will be people who will reply back to this with some negative remark or doom-and-gloom comment but I hope junior med students see THIS and not other negative, depression-infused posts.

As a med 4 applying to rads, your posts adds to my excitement.

 

[Mad Jack]

This sentiment needs some commentary.

"Increasingly uncompetitive" means that the top programs are no longer being simultaneously hit with 200 applications from candidates with 260+ and 5 publications. Those people are doing something else now... derm or something... personally I don't see that as a tremendous loss because some of them were not really meant to be rads but it was a smart ROAD thing to do in 2006-2011 (or thereabouts). Now the field has opened up because med students are all rushing somewhere else (derm? ED? Specialty surgery has always been competitive). Personally, I see this as an opportunity because some candidates who probably would have been good rads were getting shut out because of the massive flux of "smart money" resume padders.

But rads isn't an easy field either. I think of it almost as continuing medical school throughout residency. Constant reading, constant information recall, focused attention for hours on end. The "increasingly uncompetitive" does not mean I've suddenly dropped my standards to just anyone who want to apply. If one applies to rads, one is likely to get a resident spot because rads is currently facing a challenge of community resident mills that will take just about any live human. DO NOT APPLY TO THESE RESIDENCIES. They have low standards, teach poorly, and prioritize your workload over your education.

Apply to rads because you find it interesting and you can see making a career in imaging. I'm an academic radiologist, I love my job, and I think I get paid pretty decently. I was considering specialty surgery as a med student and had the scores and connections in M4 to land a place, but I went rads instead. I wasn't sure the OR would be as much fun in 10-15 years as I found it to be as an M3 and M4. I haven't regretted my decision in the slightest. The fact that rads doesn't carry the "prestige" it had in 2006-2010ish means absolutely nothing to me now. I just enjoy my job. If your whole goal in life is to make bank, then at the current time in US medical history, you need to be a specialist surgeon and you need to be ok with everything that comes with it. It's possible to make "bank" as a rad, but your life is going to be rough and it's going take you a while to get there. I wouldn't count on it. Not that you can count on anything in medicine.

Anyway, consider rads if you like constant intellectual stimulation, have excellent communication skills and are patient, if you don't need to be the center of attention and don't need constant validation, and if you have the simultaneous ability to focus for long long periods of time and still multitask effectively. If you think in terms of ROAD, consider something else. If you're not flexible in terms of where you can live after residency, be cautious (but be sure you don't switch into something just as bad).

Med students get very easily swayed by this or that rumor from their peers or this or that random comment from residents. Make the best choice for yourself. If I were not a radiologist, I would have chosen a surgical subspecialty or ED, but I'm glad I chose what I did.

Never said rads was a bad field, just that it's not as competitive as it once was. That's neither good nor bad, just a fact. In the op's case in the thread you quoted me from, that means he has a chance, maybe, if he plays all of his cards right. And that chance probably won't be at a top program, it'll probably be at a sweatshop, because that's where many of the foreign grads end up. Still, working in a sweatshop program to eventually be a radiologist in the US beats being a rural physician in Pakistan working for pennies any day, even if your education isn't top notch in said program.

 

[Gadofosveset]

Never said rads was a bad field, just that it's not as competitive as it once was. That's neither good nor bad, just a fact. In the op's case in the thread you quoted me from, that means he has a chance, maybe, if he plays all of his cards right. And that chance probably won't be at a top program, it'll probably be at a sweatshop, because that's where many of the foreign grads end up. Still, working in a sweatshop program to eventually be a radiologist in the US beats being a rural physician in Pakistan working for pennies any day, even if your education isn't top notch in said program.

I wasn't really responding to the topic of the original thread, which is why I moved it into a new one. My post was a response to the typical generic comments about rads competitiveness.

 

[Puff-of-Snow Sign]

There's a lot of discussion in the academic rads community about how we can get more med students interested in rads. I'm at a major NE academic med center with a well-regarded med school and the interest amongst our med students is pretty low compared to years past (according to several attendings involved with the med student rads rotation and interest group).

To be honest, I don't really see declining competitiveness as a problem. However, I do think that the field deserves a share of the best and brightest. As one of my med school profs said, "The world needs good surgeons, but it'd be nice if we could get some of the smart kids to choose a non-surgical field every once in a while." To that end, it's hard to get smart Type A personalities to choose something that not regarded as competitive. I know I was a late-comer to the field.

In an effort to try to make a point here, I'll say that radiology is kind of an unknown to most med students these days. No one really knows what rads do all day and our "built-in" opportunities for engagement with the med students is pretty limited, I think. IR has a little easier time, I guess ("Hey MS3, remember that time you spent 6 hours retracting for that partial nephrectomy for RCC. I could've frozen that thing in 20 min.").