Trauma

[SSSMDt]

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Hey everyone!

I am applying to DO schools at the moment with the dream right now to pursue trauma surgery. Although my passions might change throughout med school, is the pursuit of trauma surgery coming from DO schools a viable one? Are there a lot of residency/fellowship options for DOs? How many students coming from osteopathic schools pursue this?

Thank you all so much in advance.

 

[DO2015CA]

The barrier is going to be gen surg. Trauma fellowship isn't really competitive.

Gen surg is possible but better work your butt off for it. It's not a pipeline dream like ortho or derm or neurosurg and is possible

 

[SSSMDt]

The barrier is going to be gen surg. Trauma fellowship isn't really competitive.

Gen surg is possible but better work your butt off for it. It's not a pipeline dream like ortho or derm or neurosurg and is possible

Thanks for your response.
Any sense on the acceptance rate for DO gen surg residencies? How many people apply and are accepted?

 

[Scrubs101]

Thanks for your response.
Any sense on the acceptance rate for DO gen surg residencies? How many people apply and are accepted?

I don't know much at all but from what I've seen from what I believe is semi-old data. Around 6% of DOs matched gen surg ACGME and AOA, this is from 2011 however. If someone else has more recent data/ an applicant to accepted ratio that'd be more helpful.

Edit: seems a bit closer to 5% and 2014 was a 1.3/1 applicant first choice: positions ratio

Checking out this new data is kind of depressing seeing the insane climb of applicant(DO students) with an ever so slowly climb of positions...(all residencies)

Source https://www.natmatch.com/aoairp/stats/AACOM-NMS-Apr4-14.pdf

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[AnatomyGrey12]

Getting to gen surg will be the barrier. Like it was mentioned above it is fairly doable do someone who really works for it, it isn't a pipe dream like the subspecialties are. Also I can say that trauma surgery isn't what you think it will be. Trauma surgeons are more floor managers these days than people who operate all the time. Any general surgeon can cover trauma call usually and so not many pursue the fellowship. The fellowship isn't very competative

 

[miakip]

I am not sure about trauma surgery, but I work in an ER and about half the physicians are DOs. You can't tell the difference between their skills until you look at their badges.

But in my opinion, DOs are capable to do anything MDs do and it depends on the individual's capabilities. If you can be a surgeon as a MD, you can probably be one as a DO. It depends on the individual's characteristics and competitiveness, i.e. work/study ethic and academic stats, more than their degree status.

However, I do I feel that many DO schools emphasize on primary care, so more DOs go into primary care than other specialties- per AACOM "The osteopathic medical profession has a proud heritage of producing primary care practitioners."

 

[SSSMDt]

Thanks for your responses everyone, valuable insights for sure.

 

[Goro]

About 5% of my grads make it into Gen Surgery. This compares to 10-15% at MD schools. It must be something about surgeons.

Hey everyone!

I am applying to DO schools at the moment with the dream right now to pursue trauma surgery. Although my passions might change throughout med school, is the pursuit of trauma surgery coming from DO schools a viable one? Are there a lot of residency/fellowship options for DOs? How many students coming from osteopathic schools pursue this?

Thank you all so much in advance.

 

[miakip]

About 5% of my grads make it into Gen Surgery. This compares to 10-15% at MD schools. It must be something about surgeons.

Question, when you say "make it" does this mean they tried and failed. Or is it because there is less interest in Gen Surgery. Just curious.

 

[SSSMDt]

About 5% of my grads make it into Gen Surgery. This compares to 10-15% at MD schools. It must be something about surgeons.

5% of students who apply to it get it?

 

[DrMikeP]

Most of the "trauma" surgeons at my hospital actually did fellowships in other surgical specialty areas and ended up in trauma. One neuro guy was a DO the rest MDs. So it is possible but hard.

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[austintr]

This is purely anecdotal, but I know two D.O. trauma docs, and that's just in a small area in the Midwest. One is the chair of trauma services at a level 1, and the other is a burn/trauma surgeon in a level 2 in the middle of nowhere. One went to OSU and the other Kirksville. Additionally, I know one CT surgeon D.O. at an allopathic academic medical center. This is from a very small sample size too. The point of this post is that you certainly can go into these specialties if you work hard enough and make the right connections. As @AnatomyGrey12 stated above, the field isn't at all like what you see on TV. From what I have seen them do, a large part of what these docs do is medical management, gen surgery procedures, end of lofe/quality of life consults, and management of organ donors with a tiny bit of emergency intervention sprinkled in

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

5% of students who apply to it get it?

No, about 5% of the class goes into gen surg. The exact percentage may differ slightly from school to school but it is usually somewhere around 5, give or take a couple. It is a brutal residency, even with the hour restriction, and doesn't have the same earning potential that the subspecialties have. Many people just don't want to have that lifestyle. Like was posted above, in the AOA match there are 1.3 applicants/spot, so the people who are decently competative for it get it. I would bet the people who didn't match were people unrealistic about their match list or who weren't competative at all for the specialty and hoped for a miracle.

ACGME is another matter entirely (doesn't matter as everything will be combined soon) and you need to be competative to get an ACGME gen surg spot, anywhere from ~30 to ~45 DOs match ACGME gen surg depending on the year.

Bottoms line, with the merger it will most likely still be possible but you will need to work hard for it, as opposed to MDs where most students who want gen surg get it.

 

[Goro]

No, they went into Gen Surg residencies. Watch out for the MCAT CARS section!

Question, when you say "make it" does this mean they tried and failed. Or is it because there is less interest in Gen Surgery. Just curious.

 

[DO2015CA]

No, they went into Gen Surg residencies. Watch out for the MCAT CARS section!

I heard if you don't get at least a 130 on the cars section then you can't match into gen surg
LOLOLOLOL

 

[3member]

I heard if you don't get at least a 130 on the cars section then you can't match into gen surg
LOLOLOLOL

welp, there goes that dream

 

[piii]

Trauma surgery is going to the wayside. 95% of traumas are handled medically, non surgically. The trauma surgeon spends the vast majority of time managing critical care patients without surgery. Even then, when one needs surgery, it is a week or so after initial management and admittance, or is passed to higher specialized surgeons like ortho or neuro. When you shadow and rotate you'll see that's the case. And if you are interested in critical care medicine, you can go from anesthesia, EM, IM, and gen surg.

 

[Ho0v-man]

About 5% of my grads make it into Gen Surgery. This compares to 10-15% at MD schools. It must be something about surgeons.

Compared to how many who attempt it?


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[beernbaseball24]

The barrier is going to be gen surg. Trauma fellowship isn't really competitive.

Gen surg is possible but better work your butt off for it. It's not a pipeline dream like ortho or derm or neurosurg and is possible

Do you know why ortho and the subspecialties are piper dreams for DO's?

 

[Medschoolornah]

When you guys say you must "work hard" to get gen surg or a subspecialty as a DO what does this mean? Is it just that you must get a competitive step score?

 

[DrMikeP]

When you guys say you must "work hard" to get gen surg or a subspecialty as a DO what does this mean? Is it just that you must get a competitive step score?

It means all things being equal the MD will be often chosen over the DO. So do everything possible, including scores, experiences, class performance, etc etc to set yourself apart.

 

[Goro]

All I can tell you is what I see on our match lists every year.

The numbers are comparable to all other DO schools that I've looked at, and in MSAR, the Gen Surg numbers are all comparable to those of the MD schools. We don't know the number of attempts, just the successes.

Compared to how many who attempt it?


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[AsianPersuasion]

I honestly don't even remember the last time I saw my trauma surgeon operated on anything that came in. A lot of it is managing with majority of the time being acute surgery. I love shadowing in the OR and I love working in SICU, but omg I would die during training. IM here I come! lol

 

[group_theory]

Here is a list of recent PCOM surgery residents (and fellowships that they pursued) ... as you can see, trauma/surgical critical care is obtainable ... the barrier to entry is the general surgery residency (and in the near future, all AOA general surgery programs will either be ACGME accredited or will no longer be a training program)

http://www.pcomgensurgery.com/?page_id=124

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

This is only one guy but the head of trauma at the hospital I work at told me the only true trauma surgeons left usually work in hospitals that are members of the knife and gun club

 

[WedgeDawg]

Do you know why ortho and the subspecialties are piper dreams for DO's?

The surgical subspecialties are all highly competitive, even for MDs. There are (currently) AOA programs for all of them (I think), but they are generally few and far between (ortho has the most I believe). Many of the ACGME surgical subspecialties don't consider DO applicants (either overtly or covertly), meaning that there aren't too many spots open to DOs.

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

Anyways to the OP...as outlined above the barrier of entry is getting into a general surgery residency. Trauma fellowships are a relatively easy match.

Approximately half of ACGME general surgery residencies don't consider DOs.

From my personal experience with residents from what is considered to be a very desirable DO gen Surg residency, these programs are woefully lacking and should be avoided at all costs.

Hopefully the merger will weed out the lacking programs or force them to up their game.

 

[SSSMDt]

Anyways to the OP...as outlined above the barrier of entry is getting into a general surgery residency. Trauma fellowships are a relatively easy match.

Approximately half of ACGME general surgery residencies don't consider DOs.

From my personal experience with residents from what is considered to be a very desirable DO gen Surg residency, these programs are woefully lacking and should be avoided at all costs.

Hmm thats disappointing. Thanks for the insight.