What falls under "Medicine"

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Crookshanks

Juju
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I want to know where each specialty is categorized, if under medicine or surgery? Could someone make a list for me? I'd appreciate it.

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What are you talking about?

How about if you make the list of the specialties, then we can tell you medicine or surgery.


Crookshanks said:
I want to know where each specialty is categorized, if under medicine or surgery? Could someone make a list for me? I'd appreciate it.
 
Kimberli Cox said:
Medicine: not surgery
Surgery: not medicine

How'z zat? ;)

Well, I guess I'm officially stupid, because that WAS an honest question. I guess just forget it.
 
Or,
Surgery: cut
Medicine: don't cut
;)

Seriously, I think I know what you're getting at. You're asking to break it down between who are the physicians and who are the surgeons (according to the traditional old-school breakdown). I'll try the major subspecialties below:

Surgeons: general surgery, cardiothoracic surgery, plastics, ortho, neurosurg, vascular surg, ENT, urology, colorectal, Ob/Gyn
Physicians: internal medicine, cardiology, pulmonary, critical care, renal, ID, GI, oncology, hematology, rheumatology, neurology, PM&R, anesthesia, radiation oncology (these last four aren't medicine subspecialties, but they fall into the category of primarily being nonsurgeons).
Neither or both: dermatology, ophtho, radiology, nuclear medicine, pathology
 
OK, OK. Here's a shot at a real answer: It depends. There really isn't a strict dilineation between the two. It has alot more to do with how the departments are arranged at certain institutions. For example Emergency Medicine is a division of medicine at some places, surgery at others and it's own dept. at others. It varies place to place.

Some specialties are fellowships of IM or Surg. Cards comes from IM. Trauma from Surg.

It wasn't a dumb question. Just an inexperienced one which is allowed ;) .
 
AJM said:
Or,
Surgery: cut
Medicine: don't cut
;)

Seriously, I think I know what you're getting at. You're asking to break it down between who are the physicians and who are the surgeons (according to the traditional old-school breakdown). I'll try the major subspecialties below:

Surgeons: general surgery, cardiothoracic surgery, plastics, ortho, neurosurg, vascular surg, ENT, urology, colorectal, Ob/Gyn
Physicians: internal medicine, cardiology, pulmonary, critical care, renal, ID, GI, oncology, hematology, rheumatology, neurology, PM&R, anesthesia, radiation oncology (these last four aren't medicine subspecialties, but they fall into the category of primarily being nonsurgeons).
Neither or both: dermatology, ophtho, radiology, nuclear medicine, pathology

I think I'd move rad onc to the neither/both category. At my institution we do a lot of brachytherapy which is either started and completed in the OR or initiated in the OR with radioactive sources loaded at some later date post-op, but we are there to do the procedures, especially in head/neck, sarcomas, gyn and ophtho. Philosophically, rad onc is more akin surgery than medicine since medicine is primarily concerned about systemic disease and both radiation and surgery are concerned about local control of disease. But, then my roots were in surgery.
 
Thank you for the clarification. I was confused about OB/GYN, EM, radiology and some others.......I guess that clearly gives away my pre-med status.

~Crookshanks :p (that's me getting a bath)
 
Crookshanks said:
Thank you for the clarification. I was confused about OB/GYN, EM, radiology and some others.......I guess that clearly gives away my pre-med status.

~Crookshanks :p (that's me getting a bath)

Yours was an honest question. Not sure why you asked, but fair enough. I'll chime in with Radiology :) If you consider "minimally invasive surgery", "endovascular surgery", or "interventional" *anything* surgery, then radiology and cardiology (and very rarely neurology) would entail some form of "surgery." Good luck choosing, buddy
 
Crookshanks said:
Well, I guess I'm officially stupid, because that WAS an honest question. I guess just forget it.

Please accept my apologies - I had mistakenly thought that my Smilie gave my response away as a gentle nudge that you need to be more specific (as I was obviously less than specific myself).

Others have answered your question honestly - I'm sorry I couldn't, it just wasn't clear to Jocomama or myself what your question really was.
 
IMHO, surgeons are those who qualify for fellowship into the American Colleage of Surgeons. According to the colleage, these are:

-General surgeons (and all branching fellowships...CT, Vasc...)
-Neurosx
-Orthopods
-Ophthalmos
-Ob/Gyns
-Urologists
-Plastics
-ENTs

Good Luck.
 
I can't say what was in the op's mind, exactly, but I can't say that I didn't think a little about the same question early on...

I've heard from a few people that when you start thinking about specialties you like and are interested, often the first split it comes down to is are you more towards the medicine end or the surgery end. If you don't know what falls under which, this advice sounds a bit cryptic...('aren't there more than two specialties? - what's closer to which end?'
 
It's not quite that straight forward because many doctors do both medicine and surgery. For instance, many family practitioners perform skin biopsies, vasectomies, and other minor procedures. Some also "first assist" surgeons in the operating room with their patients. You might not consider Dermatology, which is really medicine-based, to be surgery, but they do biopsies, excisions, and cosmetic surgical procedures too.

Plus "medicine" to many people means Internal Medicine, which is its own specialty with many subspecialties. And "surgery" can mean General Surgery. In that case, most of the other specialties are neither. Some are consider subspecialties, meaning that you would do additional fellowship training after a medicine or surgery residency. Nephrology, Infectious Disease, Endocrinology, and Cardiology are all examples of medicine subspecialties. Cardiothoracic and Vascular surgery are examples of surgery subspecialties.

Then there are the other specialties which are mostly separate from medicine and surgery, but are based on medicine or surgery. Neurology, for instance, is based on medicine, whereas Neurosurgery is based on surgery.

There are also many mixed specialties which regularly do both. If you have an ophthalmologist, you probably benefit from their medicine side, but they also do eye surgeries. OB/GYNs do C-sections, hysterectomies, and all kinds of female GU surgeries, but the rest of what they do is medicine.

And the answer changes from year to year. Some specialties that were completely medical now have become more procedural. And what is exactly a surgery? What about invasive procedures where you only make tiny cuts into a vein or artery? Or one where you stick a giant camera with remote control or long handled devices inside someone without using a scalpel? They wouldn't be called a surgeon, but that's certainly not medical. Radiologist, Gastroenterologists, Neurologists, and Cardiologists all do that kind of stuff.

So, your question's answer is not straight forward. But it has an answer, sort of.

Hope that helps.
 
jocg27 said:
I can't say what was in the op's mind, exactly, but I can't say that I didn't think a little about the same question early on...

I've heard from a few people that when you start thinking about specialties you like and are interested, often the first split it comes down to is are you more towards the medicine end or the surgery end. If you don't know what falls under which, this advice sounds a bit cryptic...('aren't there more than two specialties? - what's closer to which end?'

Yes, that is what I was thinking about...

Thank you all once again for your responses. Since I had heard this advice about deciding between medicine and surgery first, I thought it was "black and white," so to speak. But it's not exactly, some are both, some are neither...and you guys have clarified that for me. Thank you.
 
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