Why choose ophthalmology?
Duncan Anderson* and Ken Romanchuk *President, Specialty Committee in Ophthalmology,Canadian Ophthalmological Society, Ottawa, Ont.; Chair, Specialty Committee in Ophthalmology, Canadian Ophthalmological Society, Ottawa, Ont. In a “Pulse” article earlier this year,1 Patrick Sullivan hypothesized that “Because the number of call hours can seriously hamper family and other activities, it is probably no coincidence that specialties with less onerous call schedules, such as dermatology and ophthalmology, tend to be oversubscribed in annual residency matches.” However, he presented no statistical information to justify this theory. In the CMA’s annual Physician Resource Questionnaire for 2002,2 only 40 ophthalmologists were surveyed. Of these, approximately 20% had more than 180 hours of call per month;2 this is only slightly less than the 25% of surgical specialists with this level of call reported by Sullivan.1 According to statistics from the Canadian Resident Matching Service, the ratio
