Session 25

Academic Urology is a mix of medicine and surgery. Listen to Dr. Peter Steinberg discuss what drew him to the specialty, whether you and your personality would suit in this field, and what you can do to be a competitive applicant given that urology is one of the more competitive fields out there.

[00:50] Academic Practice

Dr. Steinberg chose academic practice over a typical community practice for two reason. First, he wants to have a more sub-specialized focus in his practice available in most community practices. Second, he enjoys working in training residents. He has been practicing for seven years now.

Peter started residency training in general surgery, which at that time most programs would require you to two years of general surgery prior to four years of urology. So he decided during his intern year to do urology, which was his second rotation as an intern and it was he deemed would fit him and his personality rather than general surgery. It took a while to get into a urology program but he kept doing general surgery and did the two required years before switching.

[02:05] A Better Fit to His Personality

Dr. Steinberg cites a few things that make him fit to be in Urology. First, the types of problems you encounter in urology involve a greater variety of issues compared to other fields like general surgery (at least as a resident where they often encountered issues that are extremely serious, extremely acute, and very challenging.) Urology, on the other hand, has a very broad spectrum of different things they dealt with ranging from simple issues to very serious and life-threatening and everything in between, something Dr. Steinberg was looking for.

Secondly, he noticed the personalities of the residents and the attending physicians matched his personality a lot better than a lot of the surgeons in terms of having a healthy work-life balance, good sense of humor, being jovial and collegial. And this speaks to the issues they're dealing with which are a little bit less stressful. He add that because of the nature of some of the problems, you have to deal with them with a little sense of humor with issues relating to people's sex lives and genitals.

As to getting a sense of what community general surgery was, Dr. Steinberg actually did a community general surgery rotation towards the end of his second year as a trainee, where he spent three to four months at a community hospital. They dealt with issues like hernia, gall bladder issues, and some serious issues occasionally. But  he saw a different pace as opposed to an academic center.

Dr. Steinberg stresses that the Venn diagram of overlap between training and practice can be very small depending on what you're interested in doing. He reminds med students and residents that in whatever job or field you're in, you can get it.It may not be exactly what you want, but whatever you want to construct in the medical field, someone somewhere will let you practice it. So seeing the community general practice was eye-opening for Peter where they seemed much less stressed and doing quick procedures with not a lot of complexity.

[05:49] Traits Leading to a Good Urologist

Dr. Steinberg describes Urology as a mix of medicine and surgery like EENT (Eye, Ears, Nose, & Throat) and that you need to have a couple of different aspects to your personality. You need some of that surgeon mentality of seeing problems that can be fixed and dealing with them rapidly and decisively. You also need a little bit of that family practice doctor type mentality where you're going to be dealing with people longitudinally where you have to get used to having rapport with people, building some trust, and dealing with them over time.

For instance, Dr. Steinberg does a lot of kidney stone work and a lot of nephrology where he deals with people with tinkering medications and their diet where he...