What if I don't get picked for a residency?

[davidgareau]

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What happens if I finish medical school and don't get picked for a residency? Do I just go work at Burger King or something like that?

 

[Winged Scapula]

Well, I guess you could work at BK, but there are other options if you don't match.

- try the scramble for a position; if you can't get one in your field of choice, take a position in another field or a Prelim IM or Surgery spot.

- try and get a job in a research lab; there are lots of ads for positions at NIH, NCI, etc.

- just show up at a program on day 1 with your long white coat on and see what they say! 😉

Seriously, most people match and the few that don't either pick something up in the scramble or through the grapevine.

 

[davidgareau]

-take a position in another field or a Prelim IM or Surgery spot.
>> are these easy to get into residencies or something? Is IM = Internal Medicine?

- try and get a job in a research lab; there are lots of ads for positions at NIH, NCI, etc.
>> what's NIH & NCI, what would I do at one of these labs that they need med students for? What are the salaries at these places? Would this help me get a residency the next year?

 

[pratik7]

-take a position in another field or a Prelim IM or Surgery spot.
>> are these easy to get into residencies or something? Is IM = Internal Medicine?

- try and get a job in a research lab; there are lots of ads for positions at NIH, NCI, etc.
>> what's NIH & NCI, what would I do at one of these labs that they need med students for? What are the salaries at these places? Would this help me get a residency the next year?

Yes they are easy spots to get...many go unfilled every year.

NIH= national institute of health. They are a lot of things that you could do ranging from basic science to clinical. And dude....you wouldnt be a med student ...you would be a doctor.

 

[deleted109597]

What happens if I finish medical school and don't get picked for a residency? Do I just go work at Burger King or something like that?

Have it your way.

Seriously, there are plenty of spots. Unless you only rank 3 programs (and even then, if you are doing IM, you will still get one), you'll go somewhere. Or you might scramble. Still counts as a job. And there is plenty more to do than BK.

 

[AmoryBlaine]

I've already worked with quite a few PGY-1s who failed to match to a categorical spot (most were ortho - go figure).

Pretty much all of them were doing ok, they were of the mindset that they had suffered a minor setback and would get through it. All were reapplying for categorical positions. One was even sort of happy he had failed to match b/c he was really hating the prelim year of surgery and was applying to a different field! All of them were solid to excellent interns so I don't even think that failing to match is indicative of much in terms of skill/competency....

 

[davidgareau]

-take a position in another field or a Prelim IM or Surgery spot.
But I thought Surgery was really hard to get into?
IM is Internal Medicine right? Isn't this just a "general" doctor? How is it different from Family Practice?

-you wouldnt be a med student ...you would be a doctor.
>> So by finishing 4 years of Medical School you are an M.D.? What does finishing a Residency make you? How about a fellowship?

 

[48 hours]

-take a position in another field or a Prelim IM or Surgery spot.
But I thought Surgery was really hard to get into?
IM is Internal Medicine right? Isn't this just a "general" doctor? How is it different from Family Practice?

-you wouldnt be a med student ...you would be a doctor.
>> So by finishing 4 years of Medical School you are an M.D.? What does finishing a Residency make you? How about a fellowship?

Are you actually applying to residency? Or do you just have general questions about the field of medicine?

 

[48 hours]

Anyway, I think it was recommended that you scramble for an IM or surgery prelim spot (in the event you didn't match) depending on what you had originally wanted to go in to. For example, if you had wanted neurology or anesthesiology, then an IM prelim spot for a year and re-applying might make sense. OR if you had wanted to get a surgical subspecialty residency, then a surgical prelim year would make sense. It is not an issue of which is harder; it only matters what you actually want to do.

And then, to oversimplify things: an FP does peds and ob/gyn and usually practices mostly outpatient medicine while an IM physician does both inpatient and outpatient and only practices adult medicine (no peds; no ob/gyn). So, there's actually a pretty big difference between the two if you ask me.

And finally, of course you are an MD when you graduate medical school! Then, after residency, you can become board certified in whatever specialty you chose (eg. internal medicine) and after fellowship, you can practice in whatever subspecialty (eg. cardiology) you completed a fellowship in and so on.

 

[mlw03]

-take a position in another field or a Prelim IM or Surgery spot.
But I thought Surgery was really hard to get into?
IM is Internal Medicine right? Isn't this just a "general" doctor? How is it different from Family Practice?

-you wouldnt be a med student ...you would be a doctor.
>> So by finishing 4 years of Medical School you are an M.D.? What does finishing a Residency make you? How about a fellowship?

try talking to a current med student or doctor to get some of these more basic definitions under your belt. IM is internal medicine, yes. The differences between IM and FP are way too extensive to get into here, despite the fact that the day to day practice of each may be quite similar - or it could be entirely different. If you finish 4 years of med school you're an MD. If you finish residency you're still an MD, but now you're board certified/board eligible. To legally practice medicine in the US you have to pass step 3 of the USMLE and complete an internship. then you can hang a shingle outside your door - but good luck getting any insurance companies to let their patients see you without completing a residency. completing a fellowship can have a lot of different meanings, again, too extensive to get into here. really, talk to a doctor face to face and i think you'll be better off than by asking a lot of questions here.

 

[Winged Scapula]

-take a position in another field or a Prelim IM or Surgery spot.
But I thought Surgery was really hard to get into?

Categorical general surgery (in which you are in a track toward becoming a Board Eligible surgeon) may be competitive right now, but Preliminary Surgery (just a year or two) is not competitive in most places and even Categorical General Surgery may not be competitive by the time you get to the application process.

IM is Internal Medicine right? Isn't this just a "general" doctor? How is it different from Family Practice?

Think of IM (or internal medicine) as Adult Inpatient Medicine whereas Family Practice covers the whole range of life (ie, including pediatrics, occasionally obstetrics and geriatrics) and is typically outpatient. An oversimplification, but it works.

-you wouldnt be a med student ...you would be a doctor.
>> So by finishing 4 years of Medical School you are an M.D.? What does finishing a Residency make you? How about a fellowship?

See answers above. BTW, NCI = National Cancer Institute.

 

[davidgareau]

I really don't know any doctors or Med Students... I like you guys too, so thanks for all the input. I'm going into a post-bac with my wife in the Summer and want to have a clue before hand.

Thanks.
If you know any good sites that explain stuff like this, please post a link.

 

[Winged Scapula]

I really don't know any doctors or Med Students... I like you guys too, so thanks for all the input. I'm going into a post-bac with my wife in the Summer and want to have a clue before hand.

Thanks.
If you know any good sites that explain stuff like this, please post a link.

Ahh...this is the best site out there; you don't need no other stinkin' web sites!😛

 

[JackBauERfan]

What happens if I finish medical school and don't get picked for a residency? Do I just go work at Burger King or something like that?

pretty much I equate it to like the NFL draft. If you dont' get picked in the draft you are like a free agent and go to any team that still needs folks.

 

[MedWiz]

I really don't know any doctors or Med Students... I like you guys too, so thanks for all the input. I'm going into a post-bac with my wife in the Summer and want to have a clue before hand.

Thanks.
If you know any good sites that explain stuff like this, please post a link.

As previously noted, once you've found SDN, you'll hardly need any further resources other than SDN for quite some time (certainly not for the basic stuff you're asking right now) -however, this is provided you manage to actually use the search facility properly, and that you actually follow some netiquette, such as for example reading FAQs and thoroughly searching a forum prior to posting to it (which by the way makes you usually pretty popular, too!), as the majority of basic questions can be assumed to have been dealt with previously.

But just in case you shouldn't cope with the search facility, you may want to check out http://people.howstuffworks.com/becoming-a-doctor.htm (which is also referenced in various threads here at SDN), which provides a basic overview about the route of becoming a physician in the US in layman's terms.

 

[davidgareau]

thanks, I read the becoming a doctor article and it helped a lot with some questions I had... thanks... any other sites or articles will be appreciated.