So although I'm just starting med school, I've been working on a research project in Plastics the entire summer and am having the paper submitted for publication in the upcoming week. It should be accepted and we will likely be presenting it later this year. I have another opportunity to do another project during the year which would lead to another publication + presentation. I've also made some good contacts for plastic surgery and if I continue on pursuing plastics I'm sure I'll have a good chance come residency time (especially here in Canada where it's just about reference letters/contacts/research).
Anyway, before I fully commit myself to plastics I wanted to know if it's possible to make a decent (let's define decent as $300,000+) a year as a plastic surgeon without doing ANY cosmetic work? From what I can tell, it seems like almost every plastic surgeon does some private cosmetic work on the side - I guess because it's so lucrative. However, for personal reasons I just don't want to do cosmetics, but focus more on reconstructive/hand/microvascular surgery. I'm thinking that maybe plastics isn't right for me since it seems like cosmetics is a component of it even if you work in an academic centre. But I mean if I did a fellowship in microvascular or burn related stuff, would I really need to do cosmetic surgery on the side to make a decent living? If anyone has insight on this, I'd greatly appreciate it.
Thanks.
Anyway, before I fully commit myself to plastics I wanted to know if it's possible to make a decent (let's define decent as $300,000+) a year as a plastic surgeon without doing ANY cosmetic work? From what I can tell, it seems like almost every plastic surgeon does some private cosmetic work on the side - I guess because it's so lucrative. However, for personal reasons I just don't want to do cosmetics, but focus more on reconstructive/hand/microvascular surgery. I'm thinking that maybe plastics isn't right for me since it seems like cosmetics is a component of it even if you work in an academic centre. But I mean if I did a fellowship in microvascular or burn related stuff, would I really need to do cosmetic surgery on the side to make a decent living? If anyone has insight on this, I'd greatly appreciate it.
Thanks.
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