Tuesday, March 27, 2012

More input, more confusion

I spoke with a long-time mentor who is an academic obgyn this morning.  She currently has a career that I imagine myself wanting for my future.  The gist of a long conversation is that she thinks I should seriously reconsider OB, and should opt instead for peds or family medicine.  She thinks my personality would do better in something truly primary care.  According to her, too many OB programs are malignant and for good reason.  She also stated that she would reconsider family for herself if she could do it all over again.

It's looking like a research year might be the only option.  Not necessarily to build up my CV, but to buy myself another year before having to make this decision.

2 comments:

Kay said...

Hi, I'm in a very similar situation as you, but none of the deans at my school has given me advice that your deans seem to give. I've also brought up the possibility or applying to a second residency, but have gotten mixed responses(1- no need, take step2 ck early and if it's >230, chances of matching are well; 2 - consider applying to peds/im). If you also take a look at the nrmp outcomes, even people with scores of 190-200 have a ~80% chance of matching. do you know where his concerns stem from? ; very few people apply for ob gyn AND failed step 1, do you know how many people within the last 5 years did that, it could be only 1 person. Let me know how things go :)

physician activist in training said...

Kay - thanks for posting! I'm not sure if it is good or bad that your deans aren't talking about. I honestly don't know how many people he is specifically mentioning that haven't matched. My assumption is that it's a small handful. I've also been given the same advice about taking step 2 early and scoring high. I think the biggest issue is that a lot of programs have a computer cut-off where they wont even open apps that don't fit their criteria. No one can really give me a straight answer of what happens to those of us who don't fit into conventional boxes. Ugh... Let me know if you get any solid or useful advice!