Ophtho worth pursuing?

[afcg23]

Current 3rd year interested in ophtho with average stats (for ophtho). Worked in ophtho before school and just decided to pursue research my first year and figured I’d switch if anything else jumped out at me. Didn’t really fall in love with anything else (crossed off derm and surgery) and ophtho was still interesting so figured I’d just stick to that. Now I’ve been looking at compensation and it doesn’t seem that the ophtho salary merits how competitive it is to match. I’ve been thinking of maybe switching to anes/rad/IM so I can have an easier time matching and still have a relatively similar lifestyle and compensation. Is ophtho still lucrative enough to warrant its competitiveness?

[CordMcNally]

Do what you can picture yourself doing day in and day out.

[chocolatebear11]

Any field can be lucrative. Pick a field where you will enjoy the work or it will just be a grind.

[billy]

agree w above posts

[TheDangerZone]

Pursue what you enjoy

If, for some reason, you have not visited the ophthalmology section of student doctor network, there are plenty of threads, including a recent one, discussing compensation,

Tl,dr; high ceiling earning potential, possibility of low floor in saturated metro areas, and nothing is going to be handed to you.

[Anne]

It basically comes down to one question: Do you like eyeballs?

[fatlittlepig]

Prescribing eye drops and cutting into eyeballs, nasty.

[afcg23]

Thanks for the replies. I haven’t really fallen in love with Ophtho so looking at other specialties before I commit to a decision

[TheDangerZone]

Prescribing eye drops and cutting into eyeballs, nasty.

So hopefully you feel fortunate some of us like it, just like I'm glad we have great people in primary care, critical care, etc.

[burritos]

Wife is training their hospital's ophthal's to round in the covid units. She said they are nice. Next week, derm.

[Panscan]

Thanks for the replies. I haven’t really fallen in love with Ophtho so looking at other specialties before I commit to a decision

Have you done medicine yet? No idea how the scheduling works with covid and if that has affected your rotations. Medicine vs ophtho is a pretty big difference I feel like. Did you get anesthesia experience on surgery? Rads is tough to know because you never really get exposed to it and it's 100x different doing it yourself vs watching someone do it.

[VagabondMD]

Thanks for the replies. I haven’t really fallen in love with Ophtho so looking at other specialties before I commit to a decision

Falling in love is not required. Liking it more than anything else is a good start.

[Eye3md]

Pursue what you enjoy

If, for some reason, you have not visited the ophthalmology section of student doctor network, there are plenty of threads, including a recent one, discussing compensation,

Tl,dr; high ceiling earning potential, possibility of low floor in saturated metro areas, and nothing is going to be handed to you.

i agree with this. Where you choose to live will make a huge difference in your starting salary, and partnership salary. I’ve heard of ophth residents being offered $90,000 starting in place like SF or NYC, and then $400k in small to moderate size cities.

Also, I don’t know how it is in other specialties but the salary surveys for ophthalmology do not seem very reliable. I’ve never completed one. I don’t want anyone knowing how lucrative this gig is.

There’s going to be a huge need for ophthalmology moving forward. The population is aging and there are more ophthalmologist retiring every year than joining the working world. Every cataract surgeon I know is very busy, enjoying a pretty good lifestyle, and making a very good living

[CordMcNally]

Also, I don’t know how it is in other specialties but the salary surveys for ophthalmology do not seem very reliable. I’ve never completed one. I don’t want anyone knowing how lucrative this gig is.

There's no incentive to accurately report compensation for those and I'm not convinced most of those who reply can properly calculate their compensation.

[nephron]

If you pick your specialty by looking at which one is the most highly compensated based upon salary surveys, you will be sorely disappointed when the pendulum swings and you are no longer the most highly compensated specialist. Specialty compensation can swing very rapidly based upon some committee in government/medicare which determines how much to compensate everybody. If you pick a specialty that you want to do and end up working 5-10 years longer then a specialty that you did not want to do and end up retiring early, you will probably come out ahead. Just don't pick nephrology because nobody likes nephrology and I don't like competition.