worth it?

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

powerma

New Member
5+ Year Member
Joined
Nov 11, 2016
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
what are current thoughts on urology? i'm definitely interested in it but wondering what job prospects, compensation, demand will look like for urology in the next 5-10 years. are urologist happy about their careers? would they recommend it?

Also considering ENT/ortho/derm...Thoughts on these? Any insight would be appreciated.

Members don't see this ad.
 
Are you even in medical school? And if so what year?


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile app
 
Please share your current situation and we may give you an idea...
 
Members don't see this ad :)
Please share your current situation and we may give you an idea...


Oh sorry guys. So i'm a 3rd year medical student, trying to decided what to pursue. I've already rotated on the aforementioned specialties and pretty much liked them all and can see myself doing any of them. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
 
Oh sorry guys. So i'm a 3rd year medical student, trying to decided what to pursue. I've already rotated on the aforementioned specialties and pretty much liked them all and can see myself doing any of them. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

You are welcome.

5-10 years is respectively a long period for health sector. Some treatments or techniques may be abandoned as some of them will resurge or invented by the time. Anyway the basic urology (which is unfortunately stood in the shadow of some technological advances in these days) will hold its place.

The main advantages of urology can be classified as:
-Wide patient and treatment spectrum. From neonatal period to elderly and male to female, we face with several different surgical and medical situations.
-Respectively better outcomes. It is sometimes boring to deal with complications such as incontinence or ED after RP but results of common operations like TUR-P/BT, VIU, Peyronie's surgery, inguinal surgery, microTESE is mostly good. Just placing a suprapupic catheter in patient with a glob vesicale is a wonderful intervention if you take a look from patients' side.
-Integration of technology. This part is not for me but most of our colleagues are very keen on adapting new technologies like lasers, robotics, flourescent imaging to practice.
-Office urology. A practice depends on management (mostly medical and some small interventions) of nocturnal enuresis, ED, BPH management, infertility etc would bring you a career with a low risk, low stress and intermediate income.

Some controversies are:
-Some contindicated views for PSA screening by public health authorities. Which can, arguably, lower PCa diagnosis. Anyway while you get on community based practice, you see that PCa is respectively low percentage of our case load (which is different for training hospitals).
-Growing appliance of radiotherapy and other interventions.

Some branch specific negative sides:
-You will see many men's bottom in a day. An average person see maybe one man bottom in his life, an urologist see hundreds :)
-You will see many penes in a day. Hundred to thousands :) You will also "handle" that :D

For available positions and career choices:
-US docs would give a better idea about the future of branch. But I don't think that there will be a jobless urologist in the upcoming years. Compensation will be at least decent, I hope.

As a last idea if you want a surgical speciality with relatively less demanding lifestyle and a balanced field, urology is a good choice.
 
The compensation is pretty good, as it is with ortho, ENT, and derm. Job market prospects are good. There is a large shortage of urologists in the country. Average age of practicing urologists is in their late 50's.

There is less "creep"/turf wars in our field than in many specialties. For example, ortho and neurosurg have overlap on spine surgery, ENT has overlap with general surgery, plastics, and neurosurgery. In general, most people don't have the interest or training to do what we do.
 
Top