Urology Vs Ophtho

[hypersomniac]

Hey folks, 

I'm a Med-2 going through the transition to clerkship phase. I have been exposed to many different specialties, internal & surgical, and out of all, ophtho and Uro have piqued my interest. 

 

I know they dont really have anything in common, but they both do a wide variety of cool interventions using cool techs, and have a better life style in general (which is a big deciding factor for me). 

 

Right now I'm a little bit more inclined towards uro, because of the negative things I have heard about ophtho, such as bad job market, difficulty getting OR time, existence of monopoly in the field, and the fact that the lucrative procedures are reserved to senior staff only,...  

 

At the same time, I find their lifestyle soooo much better than Uro's. They barely get called for any emergency, their clinics run 9-4, and according to CMA, their income is almost twice as much as a urologists (750k vs 450k) (Please dont attack me on this, I'm not all about the money, and I understand that even with an income of 200K, I'll be among the highest %ile in terms of income. However, when I see such a large discrepancy in the pays and the better life style in Ophtho, I get tempted to consider it over Uro).

 

I really appreciate if you could share some of your thoughts, to help me decide

 

Thank you!

[Bambi]

You are considering 2 good fields. The harsh reality is that the final decision is out of your hands, other than selecting your ranking at CaRMS. Do your electives during clerkship, work hard, enthusiastically and collaboratively, try your best to get LORs and then, Lady Luck plays her important role.  Both provide interesting challenges, good income, very good lifestyle with work/personal life balance. You will need face time with an elective wherever you will apply.

 

Go for both and, as well, perhaps select another field where you know you would enjoy the field. Back in the day, I applied to 3 fields, each of which I knew I would enjoy. I ranked the 3, and got my 2nd choice in a surgical specialty. I was thrilled and would have been thrilled with any of the 3. I was very qualified for my first choice, had a publication under my belt with a presentation to the specialists. However, every interviewee is qualified and they interview more than 10 times the candidates than available spots. You might say that I was a gunner for my first choice, whereas for my 2nd choice all I had was a 2 week elective and many of the interviewees were gunners - who were not accepted. I return to my point where luck plays an important role assuming you and the other interviewees are qualified.   

[shikimate]

All I can say is from what I know uro has one of the toughest residency lifestyle. Small program, not enough people on call, no post call days, old fashioned attending and residnecy. but since I know 2 hardcore people who dropped out of uro and recently another who's rumored to have dropped out as well, my perception is biased. 

[NLengr]

All I can say is from what I know uro has one of the toughest residency lifestyle. Small program, not enough people on call, no post call days, old fashioned attending and residnecy. but since I know 2 hardcore people who dropped out of uro and recently another who's rumored to have dropped out as well, my perception is biased. 

Yeah the Uro guys can get pretty busy on call due to the small program size. Lifestyle is still much better than things like gen surg or neurosurg but it's still worse than optho.

 

Urologists have pretty high job satisfaction rates once they are done.

 

Also, at my residency center, all the urology staff were super friendly and seemed to get along very well with the residents. I know the urology program hadn't had a drop out in over a decade or more. So what the academic staff are like is probably center dependent.

 

I would expect the pay of optho will fall in the coming years (at least from the public purse point of view). They one of the target specialties for most provincial governments looking to cut FFS billings (rads is the other classic one). However, optho can still make cash by working privately doing things like Lasik (I don't know what the job market is like for that right now) and other private stuff.