A Med Student Asks, “Is Surgery The Right Career For Me?”

A third-year medical student emailed me with some interesting questions asking how one can confirm whether surgery is the right career choice. She said she had just completed a two-week rotation of nights and felt that she handled it well.

How does a student know if surgery is right for her? That's a tough one. I'm afraid that working only 2 weeks of nights, while certainly hard, is a little misleading. Anyone can do 2 weeks of nights. Surgery training is 5 years with a lot of nights, weekends and long days. I think that one of the reasons there is a 25% attrition rate among general surgery residents is that their medical school experience is nothing like what residency really is. Don't forget that it continues when you become an attending. The attending surgeons in private practice where I now work are putting in a lot of hours, sometimes more than 80/week. I'd suggest you take an elective of at least 6 weeks in general surgery as your first 4th year course. Find a good elective in a busy trauma center. If you still like surgery after 6 weeks of doing that, it might be right for you.

Here is an interesting website. It features the “Medical Specialty Aptitude Test.” I took it and here were the top 10 specialties it suggested for me.



And here are the bottom 10.




In my case, the test was pretty accurate with two exceptions. One is listing neurology and nuclear medicine in the top 10 and the other is colon and rectal surgery in the bottom 10.

What about other fourth-year electives? Note that my suggestions were only my suggestions. I don't know if all, some or no program directors agree with me. I'm a little out of the loop and don't know if “audition” electives [The student takes an elective at a hospital where she wants to train so that she may be seen performing well.] are still mandated by some programs.

How can I tell if I will be competitive for some of the big name surgical training programs? If you are above the 90th percentile of USMLE Parts I and II, you should be OK for all but say, the Mass Generals and Stanfords of the world. I'll tell you a secret. USMLE scores are second only to AOA in importance for surgery program directors.

By the way, most general surgeons I know like what they are doing but are discouraged about declining reimbursements, lawsuits, paperwork and more.

There is a predicted shortage of us though. One will always be able to find work.

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