I wouldnt count yourself out. DR has a high step IQR, but it's because it naturally draws high scorers for whatever reason, not because of competitive pressure. US DO seniors with step scores in the 220s still match >90% of the time.
Sounds about right. Also explains the crazy attrition in surgery. Young docs just don't know any better.
This is exactly how I approached it.
to me it would be, if I am actively participating and enabling bad behavior and profiting from it , all the while causing unnecessary financial harm to patients. Things like that would grind on my soul.
This had been a nagging concern of mine in the back of my head about Derm. Spending an entire month immersed in derm clinic put that to bed for me. Not only do I find it boring, I find it disgusting, and most of the residents were a very different personality type (like 75% ladies who put a lot of effort into their appearance and talk a lot about dating TV shows). It sounds great to have no weekend call shifts, but I could only spend a short while looking at moles, infected crevices, and freezing off warts before I lost my mind.
What about derm -> Mohs or derm path? Could help make things more interesting than just moles, infected crevices, and freezing off warts.
I did shadow Mohs and didnt find it very stimulating. Plus that still means a Derm residency, very competitive fellowship match, and a lot of Mohs people do partly general derm clinic too because it's hard to book full weeks of only Mohs patients.
Be careful making a judgement call on "lifestyle" from 1 or 2 experiences. Lifestyle varies greatly depending on your practice set up and group size (academic vs private), how much call you take, how many patients you see, and geographic location. What I'm trying to say is that, as an attending you are as busy as you want to be (the more you work, the more you earn).
There are 2 years of IM + 1-2 years of fellowship in the ABIM research pathway...but ofc you spend the "saved" years on research.
Not sure why calling DR diagnostician is silly...
They will definitely be up there in term of competitiveness with the surgical subs.
Joking about how the above poster says diagnostic radiologists dont diagnose
Yes, but you have to make sure your LOR are worded appropriately (either different letters or more vague wording like "will be a great resident" not "will be a great internist / radiologist" ) and you have to have a separate personal statement. If you do that, no will know at the application stage. However, if you interview for both programs at the same university they might find out. There is some cross talk between radiology dept and IM dept because of coordinating prelim interviews and spots so you can't apply to prelim medicine at a program where you also apply categorical medicine as that will tip your hand as a dual applicant. Suffice it to say it's a pain to dual apply. Much better to pick one specialty if you can.
Thanks for the great reply. Man this is hard. Have a late interest in rads but had my first rotation in fourth year postponed due to COVID. Now looking for another July Rads audition. No idea what my letters say. Might have to ask.
i mean if you enjoy the subject matter, they have a much better gig than us in IM. comparable salaries to Gi, cards. pretty easy to get it. relaxed lifestyle.
And by patients on the wards, you mean sitting in front of a screen all day charting in the workroom?
Agreed. I’m a first year radiology resident that struggled with this exact question and still feeling very out place in rads.
This confuses me as someone still early on in this process, I'd love for you to expand on what you mean.. how much of this applies specifically to you, and what could be generalized to apply to others and the fields in general as they compare to one another?
How do you think pharma companies decide if an oncology treatment works? They scan people and radiologists tell them.
Your first three sentences say it all: you personally are leaning toward IM but are caught up in both others' opinions and the idea of cash.
Yea I gotta say, if I had any doubts at all about missing patient interaction, my PGY-1 medicine year has dispelled them. May be dependent on setting since I'm in a rough city with a terrible average health literacy/adherence and tons of social needs. But I certainly understand now why 9/10 radiologists are happy with their field while 6/10 hospitalists are.
But 99/100 dermatologists are happy with their field and they deal with some crazy patients (jk I love rads but damn why does everyone love skin so much?)
It's funny when I went abroad in Scandinavia and talked to med students/doctors there everyone laughed about how Derm was not a very competitive training path at all for them. It's definitely the fact they make proceduralist money doing clinic, nobody likes skin that much when you take away those incentives
There’s no way to like this to infinity so I’m just quoting to say “ditto!”
