Specialties with good mix of medical/surgical?

[DancingQueen]

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If you have heart problems you see a Cardiologist. If you need surgery on it, see a CT surgeon.

If your abdomen is bothering you, you see a GI doc. If it warrants surgery you see a general surgeon.

If your eye is irritated and bothering you, you see an Ophthalmologist. If you need surgery, you see an Ophthalmologist. Same goes for Ob-Gyn, Urology, and ENT.

Long story short, if there is no medical counterpart, it is a medicine surgery mix. It's NOT the same as just having a clinic, everyone in medicine has a clinic. I pretty much agree with the previous posters, this elusive mix was exactly what I was looking for in a field as well and after rotations was able to get a better handle on what specialties qualified.

 

[Renova]

Derm is neither medical nor surgical.

Its pattern recognition and procedures.

Mohs surgeons typically do their own repairs - I've seen them do plenty of skin/cartilage grafts, and bring down some pretty complex reconstructive flaps. One Mohs surgeon I've worked with even did his own lymph node biopsies (though I admit this isn't common practice).

 

[mdfirst]

I did an internship in Urology and it didnt seem like that much medicine to me. It was mostly consult to surgery. The most meds I saw perscribed was viagra. Then, there was prostate exams. Like I said, the majority of this specialty seemed to deal with surgery.

 

[dilated]

And while we're on that topic.... nobody is going to convince me that laparascopic procedures in the abdomen is considered surgery, whereas inside the pelvis it's not. Nobody. Thats just a case of general surgeons being egotistical.

It's a four year residency with huge chunks of clinic and non-surgical rotations. "Nobody is going to convince me" that ob/gyns come out as fully prepared "surgeons". Gyn oncs spend THREE YEARS post-residency to be surgically capable of doing big whacks.

The difference between upper level ob/gyn residents and surgery residents here in basic operative skills is absurd -- unsurprising, considering they're in the OR twice as often -- and yet most of the surgery pgy4s would readily admit they are not ready to be independent surgeons yet.

 

[Rendar5]

It's a four year residency with huge chunks of clinic and non-surgical rotations. "Nobody is going to convince me" that ob/gyns come out as fully prepared "surgeons". Gyn oncs spend THREE YEARS post-residency to be surgically capable of doing big whacks.

The difference between upper level ob/gyn residents and surgery residents here in basic operative skills is absurd -- unsurprising, considering they're in the OR twice as often -- and yet most of the surgery pgy4s would readily admit they are not ready to be independent surgeons yet.

I was actually more impressed with the gyn surgeons than the gen surgeons. Gyn surgeons require a bit more intricacy in the sense that it's a much more closed space making various procedures much harder. The best surgeon I saw during my entirety of med school was a gyn-onc who did the most beautiful intricate surgery I've ever seen for an ovarian cancer with staging (Which requires extensive lympho node biopsies and surgery along the length of the ureters) Gyn surgeons were not the butcheries i was warned of with the exception of c-sections. but honestly, surgeons are not presented generally with cases where they have to cut directly into a solid organ receiving 20% CO without vascular control. It would be like a general surgeon deciding "let's cut into the kidney to expose the inner renal pelvis and let's not bother to gain control of the renal artery and vein to help with bleeding"

All that said, a fresh gen surg attending will generally be a better surgeon than a fresh gyn attending. The great gyn surgeons I met were fellowship trained in a surgically minded gyn sub-specialty. I just think gyn surgeons in general get a bad rap because people don't understand the nature of c-sections and what fellowship training is needed for the various subspecialties. BTW, I am an EM resident, I don't get along with gyn residents more than I need to and try to avoid them when I can help it 🙂 So I really don't have a stake in improving their image.

 

[twilightdoc]

Not exactly "surgery", but "procedures": gastroenterology, pulmonology (either medicine or peds for both). The problem is wading through the medicine or pediatrics residency to get to the fellowship stage- not too many procedures as a resident. The good thing about those subspecialties is that you can probably tailor your practice, depending on the mix of procedures and E&M that you want to do.
Someone also mentioned interventional radiology. Great for procedures, a bit short on "medicine" (in the sense of follow-up and continuity of care). But IR is an up-and-coming field that will take the place of some things traditionally done by surgeons.