As OPM’s do you think there is a push to keep us from pursuing the longer residencies? Now before it’s asked I am NOT in med school nor am I in my PGY’s. Say I were primed to begin PGY-1 at the young age of 45. Would I be dissuaded from say going into a urology residency? Has anyone heard or experienced this?
Now I am sticking to my guns. I said it before and I’ll say it here again. My community will get from me the doctor they NEED. If they need a PCP (most likely the case) then that’s what I’ll be. My main goal is to serve as many Valley residents as I possibly can. Having said that I myself am looking into these Family Practice-Psychiatry residencies I hear about.
I do, however, don’t like anyone to be discriminated against. If a fellow OPM’er has designs on becoming a trauma surgeon then why couldn’t she (or he)?
I don’t know that there’s a push to keep people from longer residencies. I do think that there’s a concern (legitimate or not) about whether or not older residents can handle the hours/pace/etc.
I was strongly encouraged to consider surgery by several residents and attendings. If I didn’t have a family, I probably would have considered it a lot more seriously, despite my age.
I actually think that older students tend to self-select out of longer residencies more than they are discouraged by others from pursuing them. We’re thinking about how long we’ve given up earning a decent income and how long it will take us to pay off our med school debt and save for retirement. Many of us have children before starting med school and want to be around more for our kids. Others sacrificed a very comfortable living to live in poverty and accumulate a lot of debt and don’t feel like we can ask our families to sacrifice x more years when we feel we could be happy doing a specialty with a shorter residency.
FWIW - urology isn’t that bad length-wise (4-5 years). You’re going to have 4-5 years if you choose to pursue any medicine subspecialty (3 years IM + 1-2 years fellowship). Trauma Surgery, OTOH, 5-7 years of gen surg residency (most programs are becoming 6 years, some 7) + 1-2 years of a trauma/critical care fellowship.