Climate in Plastic Surgery

[tb_or_not_tb]

Considering that it's a small field, it is reasonable that not a lot of people will be familiar with the details, but I was wondering if anyone has insights about the following aspects of plastic surgery:

-Income. Cma quotes 368k average, and I would assume it is more charateristic of academic or mixed practice. Therefore, what is the income in strictly cosmetic practice (taking into account all the overhead)? 

-Obstacles in setting up cosmetic practice: if someone could elaborate om that, it would be very helpful too. How much time/funds after fellowship does it take to set up one?

-Job market: some previous threads mentioned lack of jobs in big cities, how bad is it exactly? Is it specific to academic centres, or community hospitals as well?

-Situation south of the border, with respect to above-mentioned questions: worse or better?

Also, given that cosmetic practice is very problematic to get and the academic field of plastics isn't that lucrative compared to ophto or interventional cardiology, why so much hype about plastics in carms? I can see the prestige appeal (however, same applies to neurosurg or cardiac surgery that aren't crazy competitive), but not much beyond that.

 

Thank you

[Snowmen]

It's hard to get into the cosmetic business because it's very lucrative and those that are well established will do everything they can to keep you out of it as a mean of maximizing their income.

Regarding the popularity of X or Y specialty, for a lot of people, income or prestige doesn't nearly matter as much as whether or not they like the work or the lifestyle.

[ZBL]

I had a post some time back on this if you sift through. In a nutshell, in Canada you will need a fellowship, you will likely not get to choose where you work or in what subdiscipline you primarily work but there likely will be work, you will likely not have a 100% cosmetic practice, a cosmetic practice is extremely expensive overhead wise and not easy to build, income for plastics on the CMA site is the conglomerate of all plastic surgeons not doing cosmetic work so has some who do zero cosmetics and some who do at least some cosmetics - in general plastics is a low paying specialty outside of cosmetics. After factoring cosmetics (if you do any) plastics gross income is probably in the 500-1.2mill range but the higher the number the more hours you’re working which is already high as a surgical specialist and also way higher overhead (and no guarantee you can achieve that higher gross income number). Situation is a bit different in the US. 

 

Moral of of the story: don’t do it if you exclusively want cosmetics. 

[bearded frog]

It's the same issue as with dentistry, if the patient is paying out of pocket, you have to be good at the business part. Are you a salesperson? Do you understand marketing? If you are good at the business part you can be very successful, but you have to work at it.