rads or gas

[canan]

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hey all

canadian med student here - just wondering if anyone else has been caught between gas and rads?

i loved all my anes electives and thought i would do it 100%. then i stumbled across rads and am enjoying this as well

anybody have to make a similar decision? how did you decide?

thanks

 

[OHMAN0125]

hey all

canadian med student here - just wondering if anyone else has been caught between gas and rads?

i loved all my anes electives and thought i would do it 100%. then i stumbled across rads and am enjoying this as well

anybody have to make a similar decision? how did you decide?

thanks

If you like being in the OR then do Gas. If you like sitting in the dark with coffee then go Rads.

 

[judu]

as someone put it in another thread, gas is being a cop. lots of mundane, interrupted by 5 minutes of terror. i hate the OR, wasn't for me. lots of procedures, potential for gas. a certain personality type fits. as a friend once put it--you almost have to be passive aggressive by default to do gas. salaries are good, jobs are pretty plentiful. sometimes the OR can have a strict hierarchy and be annoying.

rads has flexibility. IR = in the sun. diagnostic = in a darkened room with a dictaphone. If you're inpatient you might interact with a good number of physicians from consult services. if you're outpatient you might call a lot of PCPs. you have to be booksmart, you have to put up with being in a dark room with music trying to catch mistakes when you're tired. call is a total bitch. malpractice is a total bitch too because progress notes and h&p's can be unclear and vague, a radiograph is forever. the money is good and it'll hold on to that a bit longer than the rest of medicine will i think.

 

[noncestvrai]

I am Canadian too =), and was thinking about gas also after doing a short rotation in it. I really liked the physiology/pharmacology. I did some pain research before medical school, so I thought it could be put to some use. As a young and excited medical student, I loved to be able to insert IVs and intubate patients going for the OR. However, researching more the field, I found out about the insane call, while I was rotating in obstetics notably...AND that an important part of the residency was spent on ICU and CCU. For me that was enough to say "next"...

As mentionned before, lots of routine time interspersed with crisis, but predictable schedule sort of and good $, and no rounding if you don't do intensive care...

I also liked rads, nuclear med, pathology, but a process of elimination brought me to rads. Job is interesting, portable, good compensation, to make it short.

Good luck!

noncestvrai

 

[DrDre311]

Did some anesthesia as a student and couldn't stand being on the wrong side of the drape. Plus the surgical blame hierarchy ("crappy" instruments, "crappy" scrub tech handing us the wrong "crappy" instruments even though we just asked for those "crappy" instruments by name, anesthesiology keeping the patient too light or whatever) puts gas right in the line of fire. Can't tell you how many times I've been in the OR and had a surgeon look across the table at me and say "Damn anesthesia..."

Bad thing about rads is that it puts you in a very vulnerable position. Your name is on a ton of charts and you don't get to pick your patients. You might know the right study for a given condition, but that doesn't mean the clinician bothered to order it. The history might be vague and incomplete but an image is forever. Plus most docs think they can read images themselves and some like to quibble with the official readings, even if their thought processes defy all logic. Also most docs forget that imaging studies themselves are far from infallible (V/Q scan comes to mind) regardless of the skill of the radiologist reading them.

I obviously picked a completely different specialty, but given the choice between gas and rads, I'd take rads every time. Pictures and puzzle-solving are much more interesting to me than falling asleep in an OR and intermittently getting yelled at. If you're still having trouble with your decision then go read the MD-A vs. CRNA debate forums.

 

[leagueelbow]

What did you end up picking?

 

[DrDre311]

What did you end up picking?

Plastic surgery.

 

[canan]

thanks for the responses....in canada we don't have crna's and anesthesia is very well respected (as is rads)....the mental debate continues...

 

[DrDre311]

thanks for the responses....in canada we don't have crna's and anesthesia is very well respected (as is rads)....the mental debate continues...

Ask yourself: Who do I want to hang out with outside the hospital? Might help, might not. Good luck with your decision.

 

[Strength&Speed]

Ask yourself: Who do I want to hang out with outside the hospital? Might help, might not. Good luck with your decision.

what do you mean by that....as an anesthesia guy i assume you'll be hanging with mostly surgeons. in rads mostly other rads?

 

[DrDre311]

what do you mean by that....as an anesthesia guy i assume you'll be hanging with mostly surgeons. in rads mostly other rads?

No, the question is designed to make you think about where you fit best. You can hang out with whomever you want outside the hospital, but you're going to be in the trenches 80+ hrs/wk with your co-residents so you better get along with them or you'll be miserable. That being said, resident classes do tend to bond closely and you probably will end up hanging out with your co-residents a fair bit.

So you shouldn't be asking yourself, in a literal fashion, whether you want to hang out with radiologists or anesthesiologists; but while you're on your rotation, ask yourself "can I see myself having a beer with these guys?" Obviously this will depend on the specific residents/attendings at your program, but that's just part of the decision-making process. It's a way to help you get a global sense of whether your job will make you happy.

Just think about where you think you fit best and take that into account along with intellectual challenge, job satisfaction, compensation, work hours, etc. It should help a little with your decision.

 

[canan]

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