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I feel a lot of pressure to do a fellowship and would love to hear from people why someone should do comprehensive.
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Why comp?
- Thread starter DrQuakerJack
- Start date
Why do comp? These are some reasons to do comp:
- You received strong clinical and surgical training in your residency program (I would say 160+ phacos, but everyone is different). If you are in one of those programs in which residents struggle to meet their cataract surgery minimum numbers, skip fellowship with caution. If you feel you need more training in order to comfortably provide quality care, do a fellowship.
- You are not particularly captivated by any one sub specialty in ophthalmology, and like the variety afforded by comprehensive.
- You don't feel a desire to be a high caliber academic. Private practice sounds good to you.
- You desire to practice in rural areas or away from saturated, 'desirable' urban centers. This is not actually mandatory, you could probably have a healthy practice anywhere with time, quality care and hard work but it will be harder to distinguish yourself in a sea of sub-specialists as a comp in busy areas.
- IMO, there are too many fellowships out there that are not worth a year or two of your life, and it is not always obvious which those are. For many programs out there, deception (of the applicant) is an accepted norm. Make sure you have good, trustworthy guidance and insight into the programs which you rank. Add to that the unpredictability of the match system and you realize you are rolling the dice a bit on what you're doing to do with the next 1-2 years of your life. There are many great programs but the problem is I've noticed people get blindsided on the quality of their program once they actually get there, sometimes for the better, but often for the worse.
- Your main reasons for feeling confused on whether to do fellowship involve the fact that you are high functioning and fellowship seems like an obvious next step to "complete" your education, it is the fashionable thing to do, your social circle involves primarily other ophthalmologists to whom you will compare yourself and it will make you feel inadequate, or you think you need it for generally increasing your marketability (unless it is for a specific job with a specific requirement), you feel force fed, etc. etc...
- You received strong clinical and surgical training in your residency program (I would say 160+ phacos, but everyone is different). If you are in one of those programs in which residents struggle to meet their cataract surgery minimum numbers, skip fellowship with caution. If you feel you need more training in order to comfortably provide quality care, do a fellowship.
- You are not particularly captivated by any one sub specialty in ophthalmology, and like the variety afforded by comprehensive.
- You don't feel a desire to be a high caliber academic. Private practice sounds good to you.
- You desire to practice in rural areas or away from saturated, 'desirable' urban centers. This is not actually mandatory, you could probably have a healthy practice anywhere with time, quality care and hard work but it will be harder to distinguish yourself in a sea of sub-specialists as a comp in busy areas.
- IMO, there are too many fellowships out there that are not worth a year or two of your life, and it is not always obvious which those are. For many programs out there, deception (of the applicant) is an accepted norm. Make sure you have good, trustworthy guidance and insight into the programs which you rank. Add to that the unpredictability of the match system and you realize you are rolling the dice a bit on what you're doing to do with the next 1-2 years of your life. There are many great programs but the problem is I've noticed people get blindsided on the quality of their program once they actually get there, sometimes for the better, but often for the worse.
- Your main reasons for feeling confused on whether to do fellowship involve the fact that you are high functioning and fellowship seems like an obvious next step to "complete" your education, it is the fashionable thing to do, your social circle involves primarily other ophthalmologists to whom you will compare yourself and it will make you feel inadequate, or you think you need it for generally increasing your marketability (unless it is for a specific job with a specific requirement), you feel force fed, etc. etc...
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