Wednesday, April 9, 2008

The career conundrum

Many other medical student bloggers (well, probably most of them) have posted on their difficulty deciding on their future career paths.
To be honest, I change my mind so often it isn't even worth a thorough analysis of which specialties interest me the most. 
This variance occurs because I find so very many of them fascinating, rather than feeling like I couldn't do one or the other. 
A part of me thinks that I should find one that is fairly lifestyle-friendly, but the rest of me knows that when I have gone for lifestyle-friendly careers before, I can end up dissatisfied and miserable - I am the kind of driven person who needs a challenge in order to be happy.
I am leaving it until I do practical work in areas to narrow it down a little, and probably won't even make up my mind fully until I am out there and working as an intern. Perhaps not even then.
A wise person once told me that your specialty choice is often determined by how well you get along with the other people working in that area at the time. If you are interested and happy in the specialty already, I can think of far worse ways to choose a future workplace. 
I also don't want to be hanging around in resident-land forever, because the specialty I want is so competitive that entry is almost impossible without connections. Considering the medical student "tsunami" currently pushing its way through the schools at the moment (and which will only get even larger in the coming years), it is a nervous time for most of us.
The best and most sensible thing to do would be to potter through medical school and do my best, crossing off the specialties that really don't appeal and just decide when I am ready. (Surgery is already off the list - not because of the actual work, which is fascinating, but because: a) when I have to go to the bathroom, I have to go; and b) I like spending SOME of my time at home, in my own bed.) I'm sure it will happen sooner rather than later. 

So, I am interested in:
- A specialty that will keep me challenged and interested;
- An area with a decent amount of colleague collaboration;
- A specialty with nice conference locations (KIDDING - I think they all have that);
- Not an excessive amount of on-call;
- An area where I can use my clinical skills, stethoscope and talk to patients;
- A wage to live comfortably (but seriously, every doctor earns that, I don't need a Porsche!);
- Pleasant colleagues;
- Work-life balance;
- Respect (not worship - there is a huge difference);
- Results from my work, and work that I can be proud of;
- Decent patient satisfaction;
- Some amount of procedural work, as I am a practical person and like to use my hands;
- And just to re-state it: I need to use my brain, or it tends to get very unhappy, which makes me miserable. It may not be the smartest brain on the planet, but it needs regular feeding!
So as you can see, my list doesn't cross out many specialties at all. Suggestions? ;)

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

That sounds like... psychiatry!
And there's another detail... psych patients don't die on you as often. ;)

Dragonfly said...

Sounds good....
There are so many interesting things it is so hard to decide before you are doing it. I always find that I want to do whatever rotation I am doing at the time, as so far I have enjoyed everything.

Milk and Two Sugars said...

Sounds exactly like rural general practice to me...

The Shrink said...

Tongue in cheek :

- A specialty that will keep me challenged and interested;
General Practice or Psychiatry

- An area with a decent amount of colleague collaboration;
General Practice or Psychiatry

- Not an excessive amount of on-call;
General Practice or Psychiatry

- An area where I can use my clinical skills, stethoscope and talk to patients;
General Practice or Psychiatry

- A wage to live comfortably (but seriously, every doctor earns that, I don't need a Porsche!);
General Practice or Psychiatry

- Pleasant colleagues;
General Practice or Psychiatry

- Work-life balance;
General Practice or Psychiatry

- Respect (not worship - there is a huge difference);
General Practice or Psychiatry

- Results from my work, and work that I can be proud of;
General Practice or Psychiatry

- Decent patient satisfaction;
General Practice or Psychiatry

- Some amount of procedural work, as I am a practical person and like to use my hands;
General Practice or Psychiatry

- And just to re-state it: I need to use my brain, or it tends to get very unhappy, which makes me miserable. It may not be the smartest brain on the planet, but it needs regular feeding!
General Practice or Psychiatry

On reviewing options, I'd go with General Practice or Psychiatry ;-)

Jobbing Doctor said...

I think you are clearly a clever, thoughtful and caring doctor to be.

The options are clear:

1. General Practice
2. General Practice
3. The Rest (with probably psychiatry as a good second)

Anonymous said...

Sounds like Derm!!!!

Hospital Wallpaper said...

http://www.gruntdoc.com/pics/bmj.jpg

:)

Not sure where this originated, but found this version via Google.

Frontier Psychiatrist said...

I love the BMJ flow chart.

Psychiatry is easily the most interesting speciality. Also, humane on-calls, cool colleagues, interesting patients, opportunities for research, and outcomes are no worse than any other part of medicine.

Also think of how long it will take to train - if you had a working life before medicine, then don't choose something that will take too long - being a junior is pretty tedious most of the time and after a certain age it before harder to take!

Dr Lamb* said...

I have to agree with the jobbing doctor....General Practice.

Anonymous said...

from reading about it over at thejuniordoctor.blogspot.com, it would seem maybe that anaesthetics fills about 75% of those criteria.

Future Doc said...

TBH that sounds like emergency medicine

Russell Brown said...

General Practice, definitely

Doc Strummer said...

Emergency medicine or anaesthetics.
Definitely not psychiatry ;-) (No real reason, other than to add a bit of balance here).

Anonymous said...

Rheumatology