This program really caught my eye. As someone who is planning to attend school in WV for eight years, it would be more than awesome to come back home for either residency or as a fully trained physician/surgeon. Could anyone give me some insight to this program, or lead me to a website that reviews neurosurgery residency programs like this one?

Xelb - 22 April 2011 05:16 PM

This program really caught my eye. As someone who is planning to attend school in WV for eight years, it would be more than awesome to come back home for either residency or as a fully trained physician/surgeon. Could anyone give me some insight to this program, or lead me to a website that reviews neurosurgery residency programs like this one?

Dude, you’re seriously getting ahead of yourself here. Why not first start college and take few premed classes before you start planning where you’re going to practice as an attending. If you’re so interested in neurosurgery, go to the WVU program and hang out with them for a few years and learn the ropes, shadow the residents and attendings to see if this is the line of work for you. By no means should you not consider other possibilities as well; you’re starting college now, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t take some other classes outside of medicine as well.

I’m sorry that my post irked you. I can see why you would be upset, though. I get that. However, your post really didn’t answer my question at all. I specifically asked about North Shore LIJ’s NS residency program. In particular, I’m interested in hearing opinions on the program, its ability to prepare you for either private practice or academic neurosurgery, diversity of surgical pathology (or lack thereof), and if it’s a really great or malignant program in general. Instead, you gave me an entire spiel about how I’m getting ahead of myself. I cannot even BEGIN to tell you just how irritating it is to hear this rhetoric ad nauseam. What if I hadn’t mentioned that I was pre-med? Would your answer have contained so much bias then?

And I know, for certain, that I’m not the only person here who would appreciate this information. There is very little information about it on here, scutwork, or anywhere else on the internet for that matter. The residency website isn’t very helpful either because the surgeons expect web designers, with very little experience, to maintain their website. Go look at it for yourself. There isn’t much to chew on. In short, it is useless.

On a side note, a select few NSLIJ residency program websites (i.e. Ophthalmology) are very detailed...which I find odd. But I digress.

So, I would hope that you can see where I am coming from. Please. Regardless of the fact that I am pre-med, I would still like to know about the ONLY Neurosurgery residency program in Nassau County, as I am sure others would like to know as well. I mean, I’ve lived in Nassau county my entire life. I know that, for many applicants, LOCATION is a very important factor when choosing a residency program. This goes double for Neurosurgery. Why? Because you will be required, by contract, to spend at least 6 or 7 years at the institution you’ve matched into. So when I posted that “it would be more than awesome to come back home for either residency or as a fully trained physician/surgeon”, I meant it. I’m not sure if, after eight years in WV, I would want to spend another 6 or 7 in WV...or in any other state for that matter.

So now this begs the question…

Why does my “status” solely preclude me from hearing a straight answer as opposed to a medical student or resident?

>_>

...

...Unfortunately, what this website severely lacks in IMHO is concise information about lower tier programs, or any program in general that isn’t Hopkins, Mayo, BNI, MGH, etc. So, I can also understand why most people would be unwilling/unable to divulge information. Oh well.

Xelb,

I’m not in a position to really tell you much, but I agree with your sentiment of being told to slow down. There are some that come to neurosurgery after trying a lot of other things, and some (like me) who got a taste early on and then nothing else matched up to it.

So while I agree with the sentiment that you should still keep your mind open, there’s nothing wrong about asking for information on a particular (especially newer) program.

Dr. Raj Narayan, the recently appointed chair at NSLIJ, is a very well known chairman for many years and has raised the quality of the various institutions he’s been at. Hopefully someone will answer your post with some better information, but I can tell you from my few interactions with him that I’d be excited to have him as my chair, and I wasn’t interested at all in NSLIJ before that. Maybe you can get some first hand experience yourself by volunteering/shadowing in the department. Having those contacts will also help you when your 8 years in WV are up. Good luck!

ParsNervosa,

Thank you SO much for your response. I really appreciate the time you took to divulge information about the program chair, in particular. With that said, I will certainly keep my mind open during undergrad. It is only first semester, after all. It’s just that Neurosurgery has been so appealing to me for quite a while now. I mean...the brain is more powerful than the WORLD WIDE FREAKING WEB in terms of the connections it makes on a second-to-second basis! And that’s not even brushing the surface of Neurosurgery. There are so many things about the brain that Neurosurgeons know that I still have yet to learn about. And, there are aspects about the brain that no neurosurgeon/neuroscientist has EVER known about.

Sorry about that, when I talk about something I love, I tend to get really excited about it.

I don’t know. It’s just whenever I think of that, and the many other reasons for wanting to pursue Neurosurgery (both personally and professionally), I can’t help but think that this is what I would REALLY want to do for the rest of my natural life. And considering I’m in a BS/MD program with the WVU school of medicine, it’s fair to say that the NSLIJ program has been really appealing to me as a residency program. If anything, the location is very appealing (30-40 minutes from my permanent address).

I will be shadowing a private practice Neurosurgeon who is focused on reconstructive spine surgery in December for at least 50 hours. That will certainly be a test of whether or not I would even WANT to be in the operating room for that long, much less go through 6 or 7 years of neurosurgery residency. Then again, this isn’t my first time shadowing a neurosurgeon. I certainly wasn’t bored when I shadowed a neurosurgeon during my junior year in high school. This physician also happens to have operating privileges at several NSLIJ hospitals, so I’ll be sure to ask him about the residency program as well.

Thank you, again!

Simmer down Xelb. As someone who’s gone through an 8-year BS/MD program myself and am about to apply for neurosurgery as a career I’m only giving you my own two cents. I spent an entire summer of my freshman year of college shadowing a neurosurgeon and spent many years after that doing neurosurgical research, giving me a good long look at the field. And even after that, it took all my med school rotations and two more months of neurosurgery rotations to be really sure that this is what I want to do as a career. From my own personal experience, I can say that even after countless hours spent working with and observing neurosurgeons, until the last couple of months where I was full-time on a neurosurgery service did I get the full experience and could honestly gauge the field.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being interested in neurosurgery as a field. If you had paused to actually consider what I advised you to do instead of apoplectically flying off the handle after my first sentence, you could see that its rather sensible advice, and its based on my own experiences that are quite similar to your own. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Spend some time getting to know the field, but also keep your mind open so you don’t miss out on other potentially interesting subjects.

Ventricles - 17 September 2011 09:31 AM

Simmer down Xelb. As someone who’s gone through an 8-year BS/MD program myself and am about to apply for neurosurgery as a career I’m only giving you my own two cents. I spent an entire summer of my freshman year of college shadowing a neurosurgeon and spent many years after that doing neurosurgical research, giving me a good long look at the field. And even after that, it took all my med school rotations and two more months of neurosurgery rotations to be really sure that this is what I want to do as a career. From my own personal experience, I can say that even after countless hours spent working with and observing neurosurgeons, until the last couple of months where I was full-time on a neurosurgery service did I get the full experience and could honestly gauge the field.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being interested in neurosurgery as a field. If you had paused to actually consider what I advised you to do instead of apoplectically flying off the handle after my first sentence, you could see that its rather sensible advice, and its based on my own experiences that are quite similar to your own. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Spend some time getting to know the field, but also keep your mind open so you don’t miss out on other potentially interesting subjects.

What other fields were you seriously considering besides Neurosurgery? What made you less than certain that you’d be happy as a Neurosurgeon with all of your experience in the field?

Oh, I was gung-ho about neurosurgery all the way. I just wanted to do my due diligence and make sure it really was the field for me. There’s the old adage about neurosurgery that if you can see yourself doing anything else, do that instead. And so I really worked hard during my rotations to see if there was anything else that really appealed to me in the same way as neurosurgery. Nothing did. I then went to my neurosurgery rotations. And it truly was different seeing it from that perspective.

As an undergrad or junior med student, you usually just observe surgeries, and can come and go as you please. Its VERY different being a part of the team. Getting up at ungodly hours, spending hours on end in the OR not really able to see the case as its going on but expected to answer questions on a moments’ notice. Going without food or water in the hopes that it’ll pay off and they’ll let you put in a few stitches in the end. Its also very powerful and profound to see the aftermath of many surgeries - patients don’t always pull through and its tough to face those families. I learned that this is an incredibly grueling field with often thankless hours and truly is a sacrifice if you have or want to have a family.

However, in the end, unlike many of my other rotations, I didnt linger in bed when the alarm rang in the morning. I wasnt watching the clock to see when I could go home. The hours flew by and I discovered a stamina I didnt know I had on day three going on 5 hours of sleep total. I think it truly is the field for me. It worked out. However, it is kind of unfortunate, that after nearly 6 years of working towards a career in neurosurgery, it was only in the couple of months leading up to my applications that I truly understood the field. Remember, this is a not insignificant attrition rate amongst neurosurgery residents, and I think a lot it is because people don’t really know how hard this is and what they’re getting into. Its not just physically and mentally hard too, it takes an emotional toll as well. For me, however, I think that I will be very happy choosing neurosurgery as a career, and am certainly hoping I match.

How does on go about balancing the need for the single-minded intensity required to match into Neurosurgery (research, grades, board scores, etc) with the common advice to remain open-minded? Is it possible to realistically do both?

rmj254 - 17 September 2011 01:04 PM

How does on go about balancing the need for the single-minded intensity required to match into Neurosurgery (research, grades, board scores, etc) with the common advice to remain open-minded? Is it possible to realistically do both?

Of course it is. For example, I had a great time in OB-GYN and could see myself potentially doing that as a career. Same thing with vascular surgery. I even did a couple of case reports in each field just in case I didnt enjoy neurosurgery as much I thought I would and needed another track to go into. Alternatively, I took an ENT rotation and absolutely hated it. I thought I owed it to myself to make sure that neurosurgery is exactly what I wanted to do.

Remember, not every picks neurosurgery years in advance and toils away doing nothing but that throughout college and med school. Rather that is the exception. I’ve spoken to quite a few residents who were going to do something else, tried neurosurgery on a lark and just fell in love. One should do research and good grades, etc. as a rule, no matter what field you’re going into.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that getting good grades was something to which only someone trying to match into Neurosurgery should aspire. I mainly meant research. Is it your experience that the reverse is true (e.g. that there are many people who were very interested in Neurosurgery all through undergrad/med school made a switch into a completely different field)? Sorry for all of the questions.

OP, sorry to inundate your post with questions that you probably don’t care about. I was just curious about someone further along’s perspective.

We’re getting off-topic. PM me.

David Langer is also at North Shore - LIJ and is a great cerebrovascular surgeon and phenomenal guy.  I bet hes a good teacher too.  I didn’t know they had a training program there.  I believe Stonybrook is also close to receiving approval to match and train neurosurgery residents and would be another good place to train in the area.

Clipsncoils - 17 September 2011 04:12 PM

David Langer is also at North Shore - LIJ and is a great cerebrovascular surgeon and phenomenal guy.  I bet hes a good teacher too.  I didn’t know they had a training program there.  I believe Stonybrook is also close to receiving approval to match and train neurosurgery residents and would be another good place to train in the area.

I’m aware that Stony Brook has clinical rotation sites for Neurosurgery, but wasn’t aware that they may receive approval for a NS residency. That would be interesting. How long will it be until they receive formal approval?

I thiink there is a good chance they will be matching residents in 2013.

In that case I look forward to hearing more information about it.