Why do neurosurgeons do fellowships at different (especially less prestigious) institutions to their residencies? What's the point of doing a fellowship if one has already done an enfolded fellowship during their residency?

Is this an accurate depiction of the prestige of different neurosurgical journals? https://scholar.google.com/citations?vie...urosurgery

I was looking at MGH neurosurgery alumni and found this guy Eric Chang who was listed as an attending at Southern New Hampshire. This sounded like private practice so I did a bit of research and found out he went to MIT for undergrad → HMS for med school → MGH for neurosurg residency, which is pretty much perfect educational experience up until that point. Unfortunately after that he did a fellowship at New England Baptist Hospital (???), joined the faculty of UW (pretty good I guess) for a year, but then left for private practice. What makes people like this who seem set up for a career as an academic neurosurgeon leave for private practice?

Interested to hear the current practice at your program or other programs:

- steroids in acute spine trauma
- low dosage steroids in TBI
- Taper plan for brain tumors
- Using navigation for T1 or free hand
- Thoracolumbar braces for compression fractures 
- cervical collars and thoracolumbar braces after elective instrumentation and fusion

I know almost all of those points has some weak evidence but interested to hear the way you do it at your program.

Any residents hearing about mandatory temporary reassignments to help cover COVID patients? Apparently ACGME is considering that in NY if they elevate it to a “stage 3 crisis”, currently at stage 2.

Let us all take a moment to reflect on the state of the world around us, and as a community recognize the loss we were dealt today.  Dr Jim Goodrich has passed, in his 70s, in NY https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/health/ne...index.html

His career was highlighted by influencing many, being a kind man, and seven craniopagus twin separations.  RIP

I miss the old clan...Kenny Liu, Mark, Socrates (hope everything is going well), ParsNervosa and Ventricles. Miss the jokes from alfafa...he was something else.

I realize that there are several attempts at this thread, but let's try to have a conversation about who the true creme de la creme of training programs are for careers in academic neurosurgery. 

Let's hear top tens in no particular order

Stay well everyone!

How long does it take to pay off student loans? When I come out of med school I will have about 400k in debt, and that’s not including interest.

I start my intern year in July of this year and in light of all the self-quarantining, I was wondering if it would be a good/bad idea to take step 3 before the beginning of my intern year. I realize I have to graduate before I can register for Step 3. I'm asking if it would be in my best interest to study for Step 3 now, register immediately after graduation in late May and take it.