1 answer
Alana
Student
McGaheysville, Virginia
5
Questions
Updated
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How hard is residency for psychiatry versus neurosurgery?
Obviously, I am aware that neurosurgery is significantly harder than psychiatric residency, but what I am asking are the main differences that really stand out between the two. I am an incoming college freshman, and I am wanted to go to medical school. I have an extreme passion for both fields and am just needing help narrowing it down.
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1 answer
Suzanne Sorkin
Retired family physician and medical educator
168
Answers
Traverse City, Michigan
Updated
Suzanne’s Answer
My answer here is based on my experience as a family physician and medial educator. I am not able to answer from personal experience as either a psychiatrist or a neurosurgeon but I have observed both from fairly close up. The number of hours worked as a neurosurgery resident is very high and the number of sleepless on-call nights is very high. In contrast, psychiatry residents are much more likely to be able to have some semblance of life outside of work with later start times and earlier stop times to their workdays. Call responsibilities will be less intense in psychiatry. Residency is 7 years for neurosurgery, 4 years for psychiatry.
All residencies are intense and challenging. You are having to both learn continually and provide service as you increasingly assume responsibility for patients. In addition , surgery requires the mastery of difficult manual skills and cases can take many hours. Neurosurgery carries very high risk and the stress involved of making a mistake leading to irreversible harm or death is not for everyone. Of course, psychiatrists also can carry grave responsibility -- misjudging a patient's risk to harm themselves or others is also a weighty burden but a different one from neurosurgery.
If you are able as a pre-med student to shadow someone in neurosurgery that would be great. It is harder to find a way to shadow a psychiatrist because of patient confidentiality and trust issues. You may, however, be able to find a summer job in a psychiatric training setting as a behavioral health technician or something similar. Then you could talk to those in the field and also confirm your interest in this as a potential career path.
All residencies are intense and challenging. You are having to both learn continually and provide service as you increasingly assume responsibility for patients. In addition , surgery requires the mastery of difficult manual skills and cases can take many hours. Neurosurgery carries very high risk and the stress involved of making a mistake leading to irreversible harm or death is not for everyone. Of course, psychiatrists also can carry grave responsibility -- misjudging a patient's risk to harm themselves or others is also a weighty burden but a different one from neurosurgery.
If you are able as a pre-med student to shadow someone in neurosurgery that would be great. It is harder to find a way to shadow a psychiatrist because of patient confidentiality and trust issues. You may, however, be able to find a summer job in a psychiatric training setting as a behavioral health technician or something similar. Then you could talk to those in the field and also confirm your interest in this as a potential career path.
Your advice was so helpful!
Alana