Does the saying "Don't do Surgery if you can you see yourself doing anything else" apply to internal medicine too?

[pyridoxal-phosphate]

Hey everyone, 

I've finished most of my core rotations and considering applying to Internal Medicine and Family. I wasn't a CTU superstar and didn't dream about IM 24/7 (didn't receive particularly great feedback  on CTU or any rotation for that matter), but disliked it less than any other core rotations thus far (including Surgery, OBGYN, Psychiatry among others). I'll keep an open mind but don't see myself falling in love with the remaining cores. Will also look into specialties that we don't get in our core.

Having said all that, I'm aware of how the residency is for IM has a ton of call, transitioning to senior responsibilities early, and the uncertainty of the second carms match. People are also warning me about going into IM if I'm not a die hard medicine person which is totally fair. 

This is making me wonder, for those of you with experience in IM residency, or know people in it would you say that the "Don't do Surgery if you can you see yourself doing anything else" saying apply to internal medicine too? If that is the case makes me wonder if I should only apply to FM slash try to find something else.

Curious on people's thoughts. Thanks! 

[Bluberblubo]

PGY4 in internal medicine that went through CaRMS 2.0 here. The 2nd CaRMS match is not that bad. Only really becomes an issue if you want something competitive and don't wanna move. You might be down to move as a med student for CaRMS 1, but by CaRMS too many people are in relationships have kids and are pretty settled so are less likely to wanna move far. 

IM does have a ton a call in core residency (and some fellowships if you wanna do cardio and ICU), but in fellowship life becomes amazing with very little call if any. When you become staff, depending on where you work you can choose to not do call (outpatient like rheum, allergy, endo, some GIM, etc.) at all or do call as a group (in or whatever specialty you want). Basically the point of all this is to say life as internal resident is NOT the same as life as internal staff. 

Now for surgery, you will have a lot of call and some places have a culture where you don't take post call days. On top of that shit is super busy. For many specialties it becomes busier as you advance in your training (dependent on the specialty) for the most part because you want more OR time and get higher dibs on cases. Now once your a surgery consultant you're pretty much limited to working somewhere affiliated with a hospital unless you start your own private clinic. Most (basically all) Hospitals will require that if you are hired as a surgeon that you take overnight call, which depending on the specialty can be busy or not.

Because of that if you don't see yourself doing surgery as a resident, You should not expect things to change much when you're a staff. Now for internal medicine, if you don't see yourself doing medicine as a resident then that might still be okay if you see yourself doing medicine as a staff because the life of a staff in medicine is very different than the life of a resident in medicine.

So to answer your question Does the saying "Don't do Surgery if you can you see yourself doing anything else" apply to internal medicine too?  NO  

[ACHQ]

On 5/20/2022 at 6:17 PM, pyridoxal-phosphate said:

Hey everyone, 

I've finished most of my core rotations and considering applying to Internal Medicine and Family. I wasn't a CTU superstar and didn't dream about IM 24/7 (didn't receive particularly great feedback  on CTU or any rotation for that matter), but disliked it less than any other core rotations thus far (including Surgery, OBGYN, Psychiatry among others). I'll keep an open mind but don't see myself falling in love with the remaining cores. Will also look into specialties that we don't get in our core.

Having said all that, I'm aware of how the residency is for IM has a ton of call, transitioning to senior responsibilities early, and the uncertainty of the second carms match. People are also warning me about going into IM if I'm not a die hard medicine person which is totally fair. 

This is making me wonder, for those of you with experience in IM residency, or know people in it would you say that the "Don't do Surgery if you can you see yourself doing anything else" saying apply to internal medicine too? If that is the case makes me wonder if I should only apply to FM slash try to find something else.

Curious on people's thoughts. Thanks! 

GIM staff here,

I think the Don't do (insert specialty here) if you can see yourself doing anything else could really apply to anything. Most residencies are tough (surgical and IM) but as the poster above states staff life can be better, but not always. However the thing that gets you through (at least gets me through as a staff) those days on call overnight, on weekends or holidays when I could be with my family, friends etc... is the fact that I at least enjoy my clinical work. Also makes it seem like it goes by faster. Otherwise I think I would have quit a long time ago.

From reading your post you seem like you want to apply to IM because "hey I didn't hate it at least" is not a great reason to go through a tough residency and then a long career spanning 20-30 years. I don't know you, so ultimately you can only decide this, but apply to a specialty you see yourself practising and at the very least somewhat enjoy going forward, not something you just tolerate.

[Edict]

Surgery resident here and I don't think this applies to medicine in the same way. The reason people say this about surgery is because surgery doesn't offer any extrinsic benefits above and beyond other specialties. The only thing it offers is surgery itself. Surgeons have longer hours, less location flexibility, a higher rate of attrition, longer training and similar pay to other specialties. You really have to want surgery to do it, because you certainly aren't doing it for any of those reasons above.