What's all this about a "competitive residency"?

[CopperStripes]

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Everyone seems to post about how they are aiming for a competitive residency. If I'm not interested in academic medicine, does it matter where I do my residency?

I am interested in a competitive specialty (radiology), but does that mean I need to get into a super competitive residency in order to get a good job afterward? What if I just want to have a private practice or work in a small, community hospital? I don't have the desire to be at the top of my field or do groundbreaking research or anything - I just want to practice medicine.

Thanks for the sage advice, friends.

 

[Winged Scapula]

Everyone seems to post about how they are aiming for a competitive residency. If I'm not interested in academic medicine, does it matter where I do my residency?

I am interested in a competitive specialty (radiology), but does that mean I need to get into a super competitive residency in order to get a good job afterward? What if I just want to have a private practice or work in a small, community hospital? I don't have the desire to be at the top of my field or do groundbreaking research or anything - I just want to practice medicine.

Thanks for the sage advice, friends.

But you are applying for competitive residencies when you apply for a competitive specialty. If you want to work at a high-powered institution upon graduation, then it probably makes a difference how competitive the program is; if you want to work in a small community hospital or private practice after graduation then you don't need to go to Mass Gen (or wherever Rads is most competitive relatively) to do your residency.

 

[colbgw02]

if you don't want to go into academic medicine, then you are correct that your residency isn't really all that important, at least i think this is true for radiology.

assuming basic competency, private practices will hire you based largely on what kind of practice partner you'll be. your pedigree is a secondary concern.

 

[secretwave101]

Many people just want to keep their options open. I'm often surprised to see just how much work people are willing to do to maintain their options even though they can't possibly choose them all.

Whether true or not, a competitive residency is regarded as one that will give you the ability to practice in any way you want. Non-competitive residencies are more narrow. They can get you prepared for some types of practice and not others. People like feeling that they'll be able to do whatever they want after years of tough training, even if they probably can no matter where they train.

The whole thing IS, of course, largely perception and peer-pressure.

 

[gunit07]

Everyone seems to post about how they are aiming for a competitive residency. If I'm not interested in academic medicine, does it matter where I do my residency?

I am interested in a competitive specialty (radiology), but does that mean I need to get into a super competitive residency in order to get a good job afterward? What if I just want to have a private practice or work in a small, community hospital? I don't have the desire to be at the top of my field or do groundbreaking research or anything - I just want to practice medicine.

Thanks for the sage advice, friends.

i'm obviously still just a med student, but i think it will matter where you do your residency, if for no other reason than the breadth of experience you will receive. and while i'm not applying to radiology, this seems especially true for that field...

regardless of where you are (large academic med center vs. tiny community hospital) you may see ANYTHING as a radiologist.

a few months ago we had a patient referred to us from a small community hospital because of BRBPR of unknown origin. CT scan was read as normal at the outside hospital. We didn't have the images and decided to just redo the scan. Turns out the guy had metastatic cancer - so obvious on CT that even I could see it.

Now, that's not to say that all small town radiologists suck and will miss huge diagnoses...and who knows where he trained... but it's still scary to think who else had false negative reads...

granted, this is ONE case and i'm sure the radiologst isnt a ******... but it seems like the more you can see during your training, the better you will be as an attending... even though you dont want to practice academic medicine, training at a larger medical center may offer you the chance to see things that you otherwise wouldnt see and that you may come across during your eventual practice.

just my 2 cents🙂

 

[NRAI2001]

i'm obviously still just a med student, but i think it will matter where you do your residency, if for no other reason than the breadth of experience you will receive. and while i'm not applying to radiology, this seems especially true for that field...

regardless of where you are (large academic med center vs. tiny community hospital) you may see ANYTHING as a radiologist.

a few months ago we had a patient referred to us from a small community hospital because of BRBPR of unknown origin. CT scan was read as normal at the outside hospital. We didn't have the images and decided to just redo the scan. Turns out the guy had metastatic cancer - so obvious on CT that even I could see it.

Now, that's not to say that all small town radiologists suck and will miss huge diagnoses...and who knows where he trained... but it's still scary to think who else had false negative reads...

granted, this is ONE case and i'm sure the radiologst isnt a ******... but it seems like the more you can see during your training, the better you will be as an attending... even though you dont want to practice academic medicine, training at a larger medical center may offer you the chance to see things that you otherwise wouldnt see and that you may come across during your eventual practice.

just my 2 cents🙂

I ve talked to many internal med docs and they said to get the best clinical training (not research oriented) that doing a training at a large community hospital setting is the best. There you will see all sorts of cases and in large volumes, where at the more academic hospitals and programs you will see largely the very complicated cases sent to the centers by outlying hospitals who didnt have the means to treat the patient. You will also fight large numbers of of residents and med students to be able to treat patients.

As a result ur training in the normal day to day clinical cases will not be as strong but u will have had more exposure to some of the more complicated cases (though those referals are coming from the outlying community hospitals so the residents there probably saw them also). Also from my understanding the community programs are usually less staffed as compared to the academic centers so the residents at the comm. centers will have more responsibilty which will lead to better training.

Obviously this wouldnt be true for fields like neurosurg., oncology, rad onc., ....etc basically the fields were every case is complicated and the idea of a easy/routine case isnt as existant.

*******Any opinions on this*******