Here’s what to ask yourself when choosing a medical specialty. With summer in full swing, you may find yourself with some extra time to ponder your future as a physician. You’ve probably been daydreaming about walking around the hospital in scrubs, holding your pager for the first time, or introducing yourself as Dr. (insert your name here). While you’re planning your future, you should also consider what type of medicine you’d like to practice and what type of doctor you want to become. Here are some important questions to think about when choosing a medical specialty: What are your strengths and weaknesses? No, we don’t mean in an interview-friendly answer kind of way (“My weakness is that I care too much and work too hard!”)… We’re talking about a true assessment of your strengths and weaknesses. You should start assessing them now and continue to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses as you evolve throughout your medical school journey. Are you really great with people and good at getting them to open up and tell you their problems? Are you awesome at memorizing the minute details of a procedure? Do you thrive in a competitive environment? Do you work well in a team environment where everyone collaborates? Are you a morning person or a night person? The answers to all of these important questions can help you hone in on your future medical specialty and the type of doctor that fits your personality. How much do you like performing medical procedures? As you may know, a number of medical specialties revolve around procedural skills. Whether it’s hours of stitching together miniscule arteries in vascular surgery or sawing off limbs in orthopedic surgery, some specialties really highlight your ability to perform tasks with your hands. They’re not all surgical specialties either! GI, pulmonary, and anesthesia are all fields in which you can perform many interesting and challenging procedures on a daily basis. Even family medicine physicians will need to know how to perform minor procedures. You’ve got to find a field that matches your level of skill and desire to perform such procedures. Would you like to practice medicine in a hospital or a clinic? The pace and organization of a hospital is very different from that of a clinic. In a hospital, there are morning rounds visiting patients, performing consults, and writing lots of notes. In a clinic, there are lots of patients to see in succession while trying to stay on schedule and also a lot of note writing. Turns out that a large part of being a physician is actually documentation, so hopefully you’ve developed a love for recording your patient interactions somewhere along the way. Is work-life balance important to you? Most of us when we think of the type of doctor we want to become don’t imagine living in the hospital, yet that’s where you’ll spend most of your waking hours. Some medical specialties will require more time at the hospital than others, and you need to figure out whether your specialty matches your expectations when it comes to work-life balance. Do you want to spend most of your time in the hospital/clinic? Do you want to teach or do research? Do you want to have kids? Do you want to engage in hobbies such as traveling the world? What kind of things outside of work do you need to feel happy and fulfilled? Start thinking now about what’s important to you and how you’d like to preserve it throughout your career. There’s still time to decide what type of doctor to become Of course, it’s completely okay if you don’t know the answers to these questions yet. Spending time practicing different skills and working in various environments throughout your medical school career will shape how you approach these questions and help you settle into a field that fits your skills and personality. You may even think that you know exactly what you want to do only to change your mind once you get to medical school. Source
