Long story short, I did not match into orthopedic surgery. I was an okay applicant, Step I - 235, Step II - 231, CS passed, top 40 school, told I had good letters, really only 1 publication that is just submitted, but research currently on-going in ortho. NO honors and to be frank, kinda crappy 3rd year grades though decent written evals even with bad grades?!?. blah blah blah, you know the deal. I got 9 interview offers but could only go on 7 due to date conflicts,
I feel like I was a "decent" applicant. Maybe on the lower end of competitiveness to those who matched and maybe could have matched 4 years ago, but whatever. I'm not a particularly strong interviewer too btw.
ANYWAYS, so I did not match into ortho, but I decided to try to scramble and got an anesthesia position in probably a middle tier academic program associated with a public medical school.
Now, I'm just incredibly confused about several things and I have a few questions I want to ask orthopods about:
1. Did I sell out or betray ortho? I sort of feel that way. I feel like several residents liked me (at least as a person/ nice guy) here at my home institution who had reached out and given me advice during the process and encouraged me to pursue ortho instead of gen surg before then. Im afraid it may seem like my interest in ortho was insincere since I did not even try to reapply next year, and I just scrambled into anesthesia.
Truth be told, I think I had a chance to match next year if I did research and/or worked on my interviewing skills/confidence a lot, but I just know that after not matching, I would get even fewer interviews (maybe 3 or 4) and I would be even less confident on those interviews. The other option was try to reapply into gen surg next year, which sounds terrible to me too given the fact that after my 4 months or ortho rotations, I don't think I could do general surgery any more. Ortho was many times better...
How do you think residents who liked me would think of it? How about attendings who I worked with and especially letter writers?
2. What should I do with my ongoing research? It's a chart review I started in January that I could probably finish if I worked in the afternoons of my next couple of months and in the little bit of time between finishing 4th year and starting residency. I am about half way through with it. I have my internship year in the same city as the research project so I could conceivably work on it next year. It is still a good 40 minutes driving from the hospital/area I'll do my internship. I think there is potential to get published and it can be finished, but since I'm no longer going into ortho, is it even worth it? I could spend the extra month purely relaxing (or freaking out about my future, whichever comes first).
Additionally, I am sure there are a ton of first and second years at my school who would love to find ortho research!!! It is really hard to find at my school! I wish I got on a project like this earlier so it would be available for the time my application went out, so I could find someone who would want a project and it could really help!
3. Any recommendations on how to not be a shitty surgical intern next year? I learned a lot about ortho or at least how to manage patients on the floor, but gen surg patients and especially ICU/trauma patients, I'm a little horrified on their management. I'm thinking of reading a book on cardiology and pulmonary management and possibly renal since those are the systems I am weak on but I don't know.
Also, did anyone else not match... It seems like everyone on this site matched, so congrats to you all (trust me, I envy you) but what about the dark side of the match...
Thanks for your help!
