Medical vascular surgery residency

[gutonc]

Hello, I am an IMG, YOG >10yrs, average step scores. Currently I do shadowing with a vascular surgeon and I felt interested to pursue vascular surgery residency though my whole career was as a general practitioner. I know it must be difficult to get a residency in any specialty especially vascular surgery. Does anyone have any practical experience on it??? Actually I lost my interest in Internal medicine because as an internist you have a huge knowledge in medicine but most often you can't handle it; eg: if you get a pt of stroke you have to end up calling the neurologist. I might be wrong. Please help me to find out the real pathway, as I am still dreaming to be a vascular surgeon. What is the lifestyle of vascular surgery? I have 2 kids. With considering everything please advise me to make the right decision.

Thanks

If you are a foreign graduate (and not a US-IMG), and you have been a vascular surgeon/trainee in your home country for the 10+ years since you graduated, then you have a very, very slim chance of becoming a vascular surgeon in the US. If all of the above are not true, then you have absolutely no chance.

Vascular surgery (either integrated or fellowship) is one of the more competitive and grueling specialties in medicine and can be difficult for a US grad with excellent scores to match into.

With your stats, you would be very lucky to match into any sort of residency at this point. Your YOG alone will exclude you from the vast majority of programs.

I say all of this not to be discouraging, but to be realistic.