What could I expect when exiting a surgical residency and fellowship in my late 40s?

[Test Profile]

I begin medical school in a couple months, and I am beginning to think about surgical specialties, so I can get on board with relevant research projects during my preclinical years. I have a couple years of experience working in the emergency department of a trauma center, and I am very interested in trauma--in fact, my interest in trauma is a driving force behind my mid-30s career change. Right now, I am most interested in trauma surgery, but I can also envision pursuing orthopedic surgery.

There is research suggesting correlations between age and a variety of other metrics, such as work hours, work/home conflict, and quality of life (Distress and career satisfaction among 14 surgical specialties, comparing academic and private practice settings. - PubMed - NCBI). However, in this dataset, surgeon age is tightly related to years of practice, and that makes it hard for me to guess what my life might look like when I finish surgical residency and fellowship in my late 40s. For example, what kind of work schedule might I expect? How might that change in the subsequent decade? This kind of information would help me discuss reasonable expectations with family, etc.

Thank you.

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[doc05]

You will face difficulties getting a job

 

[vhawk]

You will face difficulties getting a job

Really? Why? Honestly if you are going to try to do this, trauma surgery or acute care surgery seems like the best path. I'm finishing fellowship and I'm 34 and I already feel old and I can only imagine how hard it would be to be ten years older, but if it's what you want to do then it's what you want to do. But trauma/acs at least gives you the ability to more tightly control your lifestyle and at least as of right now there are lots of jobs. It's always hard to predict what the market will look like ten years from now but I don't think it's likely there will be LESS of a demand for someone to do the acute care work.

Are you going to build a powerhouse academic career in a super competitive field, maybe not, but I don't really think your options will be super limited by being a little bit older than everyone else.

 

[Warderino92]

There was a previous thread on this, i'd imagine most of the discussion still holds true if you wanted to read through that.

Older and Age for Residency Selection

 

[doc05]

Really? Why? Honestly if you are going to try to do this, trauma surgery or acute care surgery seems like the best path. I'm finishing fellowship and I'm 34 and I already feel old and I can only imagine how hard it would be to be ten years older, but if it's what you want to do then it's what you want to do. But trauma/acs at least gives you the ability to more tightly control your lifestyle and at least as of right now there are lots of jobs. It's always hard to predict what the market will look like ten years from now but I don't think it's likely there will be LESS of a demand for someone to do the acute care work.

Are you going to build a powerhouse academic career in a super competitive field, maybe not, but I don't really think your options will be super limited by being a little bit older than everyone else.

I was serious. It has to do with the biases of those doing the hiring. It's certainly not fair. And usually not intentional. But that's how things work. Best of luck.

 

[deleted480308]

Same thing as the younger guys but with worse vision, more back pain and a bigger prostate

 

[bannie22]

regret

 

[droliver]

I don't know that I could physically do the same kind residency I did in my late 20's in my 40's. It was not unusual to do 6 months of every other night in house trauma call for four of the 5 years of my general surgery training where you might not get 6-8 hours of sleep over 48hours for weeks at a time.

I don't think concern with a job is an issue though afterwards. If you can produce, people will hire you.