As you say, they only would work 3 months out of the year. That is hardly research, since the normal time they take off is about 6 weeks. For a group to take off 9 months a year, would be an extremely rare situation. If someone tried to present research on that rare situation, he would get reamed on the stage (as he should).Big Orange Junky wrote:Owlman wrote:Those numbers don't work out unless there are extremely good leave times granted. As a retired OB/GYN with women in his residency, he may have been smart, but he ain't too bright in the timing of his research.
On a related note: what areas do the top students in medical school attend (the hardest residencies to get)?
It changes so much that I don't know now. In 2006 (the year I graduated) the hardest one was Radiation Oncology, some rediculously low number of programs in the entire US. Then that year Dermatology, Radiology and Surgery were all way up there as far as your core fields and there was an article touting Derm and Surgery as being the two most selective that year (most applications per spot available, why derm and surgery were close is beyond me but it was that year. I think surgery has went back down now but the reasoning was that was when the work hour restrictions were supposed to go into complete effect capping at 80 hours per week and that's why the spike in surgery applications).
I don't remember the exact year the incident happened but it seems like it was 2004. I was still in med school and Howard was an intern so I think 04 would have been right but I could be off by one year either direction. OB went through a period of really pushing women OB/GYN's for several years, as you probably well know. The program at my school was almost entirely female faculty, and every single resident except Howard was female at that time. He was an intern and he had to give his Grand Rounds. There was also at that time a national trend of family oriented women joining together and each one basically taking 9 months off. So it was a 4 woman private practice but only one of them was available/working at any one time. The numbers worked out such that it was 4/1 the number of women OB/GYNs to have the same coverage/deliveries/patients as one man during the period he did his research and according to his presentation that was the trend that seemed to be catching on. Again not sure if it is still that way or not nor am I sure exactly how widespread that practice got but he had several peer reviewed studies backing him up. IMO if they could find like minded partners and could afford the income hit then more power to them. Nothing wrong with them having their cake and eating it too as long as they don't expect the income of working full time while actually working part time. They were the ones that did the work to get there if that's how they want to practice it's none of anybodys business. The funny part was he was the only male resident in the program and he had the balls to present that to a knowingly male hostile, flaming liberal faculty. (Most of that faculty found other jobs the next year due in part to that hostility so I never had to deal with it on my OB rotation and it was great when I went through, not so for ones that went through before me). He became an instant legend even though he was one of those that lots people didn't like because he always aced everything lots of people took him as arrogant and cocky because he was such a brain. He was really a nice guy. I think most that didn't like him were just jealous because of his board scores and they couldn't compete with him. However, when he pulled that off he pretty much got props from everybody. His numbers were correct and he had good literature to back him up. It was as Biden said "a big fricken deal" in those parts and the fact that his research/literature was so solid they couldn't mount a counter argument and everybody knew how much it had to have eaten the faculty up for him to do that in that forum made it even better.
Matter of fact it is still talked about in that program today, probably because he is one of that programs star attendings now. That makes the story even better in my book.
As for the top 1%, Dermatology, specialty surgery in particular Ophthalmology and Ortho (general surgery is not usually what the top students choose) and therapeutic radiology (not general radiology).
