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Neurology: Lifestyle and outside opportunities


Guest RageoftheDragon

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Guest RageoftheDragon

Hey all,

 

The further I get into my 1st year med, the more and more I love anything neuro. This jives well with me, as I have a family full of neuro cases wanting me to go ahead and save them somehow...good luck to them.:P

 

Anyways, I was just wondering if anyone had any insight into the kinds of hours faced by a neurologist and the amount of spare time one might have to embark on other endeavors, such as joining administrative boards. Any thoughts are welcome. Thanks!

 

-RotD

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Neurology: pretty good lifestyle.

 

Neurological surgery: Not so.

 

For example, my attending on neurological surgery, although married, decided not to have kids because of the lifestyle. A lot of the neurosurgeons I know are not married. They do make bank though. One of them drives a Ferrari, and another owns two hummers.

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Guest UWOMED2005

In Canada - Neurologists work pretty good hours as I understand. You would have time to join admin boards. The money isn't as good as some of their cousins in internal, but they're definitely not poor.

 

In Canada - Neurosurgery is currently a disaster. This was specialty with greatest percentage of spots open after the first round this year (5/16!) The money here in Neurosurg isn't awful, but isn't great - some gen surgeons do better. And since the working environment is so poor and we're short on neurosurgeons, those that are working here are getting killed. . .

 

Neither residency spot here filled this year. And it's my understanding (albeit from a 2nd hand source) almost 1/2 the neurosurg residents who should be here have since switched to other programs. . . :eek

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Just watch, in a few years, there will be a shortage of neurosurgeons and the field will be hot again.

 

Heck I think there are only 120-something spots in the US. With 15 spots in Canada, I think that they are training way too many neurosurgeons. As a general rule, I think anything in the US is about 10x as abundant as anything in Canada.

 

Neurology is cool. I think it's too academic though. There's not a lot of practicality to the specialty.

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Guest maximus180

The lifestyle of a consultant neurologist in Canada is quite good, though the hours are variable depending on where you work. In a regional centre, like Windsor, Guelph, Kitchener, etc. the workload can be quite high as there aren't a large number of colleagues for support, and some of these centres don't have neurosurgical backup (those have to be shipped out to an academic site).

 

For residency, the hours were long where I trained (the medicine residents were usually able to flee the building before we got out) and grand rounds could be something of an inquisition. That said, I passed the Royal College exams, so it wasn't all bad!

 

As for the quote from the moderator about it being an impractical specialty, that is a myth. The number of new therapies that we've had access to since my residency is great: TPA for stroke, Botox for dystonia (the real reason it came to the market), interferons for MS, etc. In the US, invasive neurologists are starting to appear doing carotid stenting. Neurology currently is where cardiology was in the 1970's: about to takeoff (one cardiologist from the 1960's once told me that as a resident, all he had to offer was lasix, digoxin, and prayer!).

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Guest UWOMED2005
As for the quote from the moderator about it being an impractical specialty, that is a myth. The number of new therapies that we've had access to since my residency is great: TPA for stroke, Botox for dystonia (the real reason it came to the market), interferons for MS, etc. In the US, invasive neurologists are starting to appear doing carotid stenting. Neurology currently is where cardiology was in the 1970's: about to takeoff (one cardiologist from the 1960's once told me that as a resident, all he had to offer was lasix, digoxin, and prayer!).

 

Yeah, that's a biased opinion on my part, and not one I can back up all that well - but true or not, it's a commonly held stereotype about neurology. And there are still numerous disorders in neurology where treatment is either essentially non-existent or unsatisfactory.

 

Academically I do find neurology one of the most interesting specialties. . .

 

On a side note, I remember one nurse nearing retirement referring to a time when MIs and strokes were barely considered worth calling the resident on-call because there wasn't much they could do other than make the patient comfortable! How things change. . .

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