undecided on residency- application advice

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undecided05

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if you couldn't tell, I'm kind of torn between two residencies....
Would anyone advise applying to both; even at the same hospital or city?
Would it be better to maybe apply to the two separate residencies, but not at the same hospitals?
 
hi undecided05,

my advice to you is to make a list of the positives and negatives of both of the specialties that you are considering. Talk to physicians in the "community" who are practicing in both specialties. Do your homework and you will not have to worry about applying to two different specialties.
This is my 0.02.

CambieMD
 
too late... I really like Orthopaedics and Anesthesia. As you can see they are both very different, but both have positives and negatives. As I talk to both sets, neither could see themselves doing anything else. You see people trying to get into ortho that can't. You see people leaving other specialties to go into Anesthesia. You never see anyone leaving either specialty. But thanks for the advice anyways.
 
Hey undecided,

I am one of those folks thinking about applying to gas from another specialty.
I am a primary care physician right now. You will never regret going into anesthesiology.

CambieMD
 
You can apply for both, but I woulnd't interview for both at the same hospital. Imagine if you saw the anesthesia program director in the halls a month after your interview - oh, what are you doing here again?...umm...interviewing for ortho. That's not going to get you in to either one. Although I know several people who interviewed for two programs at one hospital and never got found out, I would be nervous wreck wondering if they'd find out my disloyalty to the specialty. Same city, different programs would be okay though b/c I dont' think word would get around that much.

Consider applying for both, but between now and interview time, doing at least one more rotation of each, at hospitals other than the one you rotated at already, to get a better feel for the two. Then, you can choose to accept interviews in the specialty you like better. Also, the programs may decide for you - both are kind of competetive now, ortho still more so - say you apply to 25 ortho programs but only 3 offer you interviews, well, good thing you put in those 25 anesthesia applications too.

The third option if you are truly undecided when it comes time to make the rank list, is to do a surgery prelim year. Yes, this delays the finality of matching into a known specialty, and makes you have to go through match twice, but it gives you a year to try out the surgical life and see if it's for you, as well as getting to see the anesthesia residents often and check out their life a bit more. If you find yourself in the OR always peeking over the curtain to see what anesthesia's up to, you will know that's where you should be. You have to do an intern year for anesthesia anyway - although most do medicine or transitional, I am sure anesthesia programs would look at you as a super hard worker b/c you chose to do the toughest intern year of the three options - and the most procedure-oriented (an IM intern easily puts in less lines all year than a surgery intern does each month).

They're both cool specialties and it's hard to make this decision. My vote is to leave yourself many options at this point - apply to both plus some prelim surg programs, and continue to think on this decision over the next few months before you have to make that rank list.
 
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