Surgery

[benneh]

Hey gals

Sorry if this has been covered many times before, but im new to this area of the forum. As an A level student my head has been stuck in the sand (the sand being ukcat and personal statement threads)

I was wondering if i get into med school, whats the deal with gaining a job as a surgeon at the end of it. I hear its very very competitive. Anything you can do/have to do, to improve your chances of getting into surgery?

Cheers

[Marc16uk]

Hello,

I don't know much about the competitivity of becoming a surgeon, but I just know someday I would like to become a specialist in cardiology, that would be one hell of a dream :P.

To achieve that is put my words into action and never give up .

[Renal]

At the moment, they can't even decide whether you are 8 or 9 years away from deciding whether you actually want to be a surgeon or not. Who knows what the state of the play will be then.

For you Marc, that's 9 or 10 years before you can decide whether you want to be a physician and a further 3 or 4 years before you can decide whether you really want to be a cardiologist.

And that's assuming everything goes well for you guys and nothing changes in the next decade.

Don't get too hung up on specialities, especially if you don't know what it actually means.

[TC]

Mark - St. Brendans College, Brislington is where all the best people go.

Great memories I have of being there.

[gimperial99]

Im currently on an Orthopaedic surgery training rotation in London. Surgery is the most competitive choice BY FAR. The reason being surgery is a dying field. Many things are going the way of interventional radiology and endoscopy. I may be biased but the only real safe fields in surgery are ortho and plastics. The classic example is gastric surgeons. They used to be in demand in the 60's, as a gastrectomy was the op of choice for ulcers. Then someone invented H2 antagonists and PPI, and they were all out of business.

If you are interested you will need to spend your time at med school getting publications, go on a surgery elective, and get a first in your BSc.

[DamianUK]

gimperial, have you looked at the competition ratio's?
Surgery is not number one in terms of competiton but its damn near there.

benneh, seriously no one can advise you at the moment, mainly because the system is in a state of flux. I am hoping to be a surgeon (or at least get into the ST surgery programme) but many people i know decided surgery was really not for them after doing a block of it at medical school. Even people who thought it was thier calling did it for a while and just sort of lost interest. The old days of general surgery are now over in the main, lots of the procedures are now very specialised and my bosses have said they are not as excited for the juniors who will be doing the same operation for the rest of thier careers now.

In the end yo umay end up falling in love with medicine or psych or maybe even decide GP is the way forward (i had the best placement ever there .. still dont want to do it though).

[benneh]

wow scary stuff. to be honest though im pretty ignorant to life and prospects of a medical student, so i will let time heal said ignorance, and get to work!

[gimperial99]

Hi Damien. What level competition ratios were you looking at? Take ST3 cardiothoracics, it was 50 to 1. The other problem with the ratios this year, was they included FTSTAs. Surgery had far more FTSTA to ST posts than other specialties. But even then, its not just about the ratios. An example would be pathology. They had quite high ratios of applications in 2006, I think about 7 to 1. But then they did not even fill most of their posts because most of the applicants were not "appointable".

I agree with you regarding surgery. As I said the only surgery with real cutting in the future will be plastics and orthopaedics. Lower GI surgery will probably survive too. I am on the ST programme in surgery so have a bit of experience. Anyone who wants some advice is welcome to ask. All I can say is that you really need to experience it to make an informed choice. Too many medical students nowadays don't bother turning up. When you do your surgery attachment try to go on nights, go and see patients in A and E, and remember there is a lot more to surgery than fantastic Whipples procedures!

But if you do decide on surgery you need to be competitive. You need papers, honours, presentations, and evidence of devotion to surgery.

[DamianUK]

cardiothoracics is a special case. There are many trained to reg level who will never have jobs in that speciality..so the ratios are a bit off (mainly as the number of jobs was also so small).

Neurosurgery was less competative than respiratory!

[gimperial99]

Competition ratios were misleading. As I said most surgical specialities had a majority of places as FTSTAs but the ratios were applicants to posts which included FTSTAs and ST run through (at ST1 and ST2). Also if you are at interview and there is 1 other person who has twenty publications, a phd, honours, prizes etc, or you are up against 5 other people, the best of whom have one publication in the French journal of Medicine, which is the most competitive?

For some reason respiratory has always been one of the most popular medical choices. Im not sure why.