Surgery Away rotation etiquette?

[grandinsurg]

I'm on a general surgery away rotation and I'm working in a great program. I ultimately want to go into vascular surgery at this place also (doing the general surgery 5 +2 vascular track). Would it be inappropriate for me to ask to talk to some vascular surgeons or see some of those surgeries while I'm on the general surgery rotation ?

Thanks

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[GregsAnatomy]

Ask the chief resident or whoever is responsible for rotation assignments if you could spend some time on the vascular service. At most hospitals vascular is a more intense rotation with a larger service and they will probably respect you for your interest and taking on a larger workload. Make sure you do make some time to meet the program director and general surgery attendings/residents and they will ultimately be the ones interviewing you and making ranklist decisions. If you do get some time on the vascular service, a recommendation letter from a vascular attending can definitely help.

FYI, I did a month of vascular surgery as an away rotation at the program I eventually matched to for general surgery.

 

[SocialistMD]

1. Is it a guaranteed GS-vascular track, or are you saying you want to do GS there and hope to do the fellowship there as well? It makes a difference, because I don't generally advocate for doing your residency at the same place as your fellowship (better to see other ways to skin a cat, so to speak). It also begs the question as to why you didn't do the away on the vascular service rather than the general surgery service...

2. Are you on a general surgery rotation? If so, I would not suggest you leave your service to do stuff on another. If you can find a way to do it on your own time (attend vascular conferences, OR planning meetings, volunteer for vascular call when you are not on call on your service), that is one thing, but to leave your service (and the attending from whom you plan to ask for a LOR) to look at another probably wouldn't leave the best impression of (a) your attention span, (b) your interest in what your service attending does and (c) your work ethic, all of which can lead to a poor LOR.

 

[Winged Scapula]

Agree with Socialist.

Leaving your "home" service to spend time on another looks bad. It may look especially bad if there is a bad relationship between the general surgeons and the vascular guys (ie, at my home program, where the PD hated the CT surgeons, it would have been tantamount to application suicide to ask to leave his service (Surg Onc) and do some CT cases. ).

After hours or on weekends when you are not expected to be doing something on the general service would be a fine time to get some Vascular experience. As noted above, the general surgeons will likely have significant input into who matches there, even for a combined program, so it behooves you to tread this road lightly.

Finally, if you are thinking about this place for a Vascular fellowship, frankly, that's so far away, that its probably a waste of time right now...most residents change their mind about their specialty and the program may be totally different in 4-5 years when you are applying for fellowships.