<p>I’m interested in being a reconstructive surgeon, but it seems like this is not its own profession but rather a branch of plastic surgery. Basically, I’m worried that if I pursue this career, will I be doing more (say) nose jobs than cleft palate surgeries…</p>
<p>They are branches of plastic surgery. After successful completion of a residency program in neurological surgery, orthopedic surgery, otolaryngology, or urology, you can enter a plastics residency fellowship which is 2 years in length. After that you can do another fellowship in the type of reconstructive surgery that most interests you. </p>
<p>A book I have says that there are fellowships in burns, hand, craniofacial, microvascular, pediatric and aesthetic surgery, but I believe that only craniofacial and hand fellowships can lead to board certification as a subspecialist - that doesn’t mean you can’t do what interests you, just that you wouldn’t become board certified in that particular area. As far as doing nose jobs and more cosmetic surgeries, I’d think that since these are largely elective surgeries, you’re not quite in the sort of situation where you’re required to do those. Simply, the surgeons that do those procedures usually advertise and if you don’t, then you’re likely not going to have many patients finding you to do such procedures. That said, those types of surgeries do pay the bills. They may not be exactly what you had in mind, but there is a lot of money. (the surgeon I followed last summer didn’t like doing colonoscopies but they paid the bills really well, so he did them…lots of them, and then he let me and plenty of other students do them too.)</p>