Neurologist

Neurologist: a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of all types of diseases or impaired function of the:

• brain
• spinal cord
• peripheral nerves
• muscle
• autonomic nervous system
• related blood vessels.

Quick Facts

Competitiveness: Low

Length of training: 4 years

Number of residency programs: 117

Number of residents in training: 1,234

Number in U.S. currently Board Certified in specialty: 9,313

First year median compensation: $138,000

Mean hours per week in patient care: 50.1

Residency Information

You will complete a 1 year internship (8 months must be devoted to internal medicine) followed by 3 years of training specific to this specialty. It is possible to subspecialize:

• Child- specialize in the diagnosis and management of neurologic conditions in children.
• Clinical Neurophysiology- a neurologist who specializes in the management and treatment of central, peripheral, and autonomic nervous disorders using a combination of clinical evaluation and electrophysiologic testing.
• Pain Medicine- provides a high level of care for patients experiencing acute, chronic or cancer pain in the hospital and ambulatory settings.

To subspecialize will require an additional 1 to 3 years of training.

Why Choose

Physicians enter this field because of the intellectual challenges and being positively influenced by others in the field. Doctors in this specialty acknowledge they do not like the other specialties because many of them have too many routine procedures.

One interesting aspect is that many doctors in this specialty personally suffer from more migraines than what is found in the general population.

Typical Schedule

Many of these practices resemble that of general internists. They may begin their day at 7:30 AM rounding on a few patients at the hospital, following up on consultations, reviewing the CT scans and x-rays of these patients, and then discussing cases with other physicians. By mid-morning you will arrive at your office and see patients to about 4:00 PM. Throughout an entire week you may see 25 new patients and 40 return patients.

Patients are either followed for an acute problem or long-term if it is a chronic issue. The most common ailments you will encounter are migraines and vertigo.

If You're Interested

You will be a better doctor in this specialty if you choose a residency which offers a wide spectrum of patients, which means having access to a large hospital for acute issues, but also an out-patient facility to follow long-term cases. If interested in child neurology you will need to learn about children with learning disorders and behavior problems because they will makeup a lot of your future practice.

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