This is a poll for anyone and just a hypothetical exercise. I don’t think I am ever going to med school although I did take some med school classes in graduate school that made me around enough physicians to be that made me wonder.
Regardless of who you are or where you are in life, pick one to three (no more) types of medical specialties that you would choose for yourself and be professionally competent in.
My picks are:
Radiology - I like figuring things out based on just the evidence at hand.
Primary care - that would be rewarding
Psychiatry - it is an interesting field but can be frustrating when patients just stop taking their meds for no reason.
If you already are a physician, that is even better but exclude your current field.
What are your picks if you get thrown into the doctor’s office?
Dermatopathologist. Other doctors send you their specimens for you to make a diagnosis. The one we use must do hundreds of them a week. You make great money, are never on call, and have no personal contact with patients- what’s not to like?
ETA: Not really. I don’t think my bedside manner would be great shakes, though. Plus I was always good at anatomy, and I can cut up a chicken with masterful efficiency.
Anesthesiologist. I would take that one in seven hundred figure and do to it what Chuck Norris does to defenseless creatures. (Okay, not really, I know they made that up for “Awake.”)
Dermatologist with specialty in tattoo removal. Because in 10 years all the idiot frat guys with tribal tattoos and girls with “tramp stamps” are going to want to have them removed, and I’ll be fucking rich.
Radiology
While I find medicine theoretically interesting, I have personal space issues. I don’t want a job that involves physical contact with a lot of people. Especially if they’re sick. I also definitely don’t want to touch dead people (which I understand is still a requirement in med school). So, I would need a specialty that would never come in physical contact with patients.
But figuring out what’s ailing people from a distance and helping solve the problem and helping them to become healthier and happier? That would be cool. From a distance.
What’s not cool about being able to drill into people’s heads and play around with their brains? It’s also the area of practice that has the farthest to advance (i.e. there will always be more to learn.)
Theoretically, OB, 'cause I love the whole pregnancy/birth process - especially when it’s happening to other people. But it’s becoming a field nearly impossible to work in, with outrageous malpractice rates. My hunch is that either malpractice laws in OB will have to change, or baby catching is going to become the purview of nurse midwives each paying a portion of their “overseeing OB’s” malpractice insurance.
Dermatology is appealing, though, on a strict cost/benefit basis. They’re rather highly paid and in demand as far as physicians go, but their on-call/emergency patient load is almost nil. There’s very little in dermatology that can’t wait until office hours. That would be nice, since I have my own family to raise.
Really, though, I don’t want to be a physician at all, even though I love all things medical. Too much pressure and responsibility; I work best in middle-management situations. I don’t want to figure out what’s going on, but you tell me what’s happening and what to do and I can make sure that happens. I also prefer to spend enough time with people to really get to know them, and I love teaching them about new stuff. So nursing is it for me, I think.
Radiology has a surprising amount of patient contact, usually in circumstances that are pretty stressful. (“I’m doctor X, I’ve been asked to thrust this needle into your chest under CT guidance to get a sample of your lung mass. Likely it won’t kill you, but it might collapse your lung, and then I’ll have to stick a valve in your chest to let out the air- sign here”, or “I’m going to run barium up your bum then pump you full of air and take pictures. This will be somewhat uncomfortable.” Or just imagine discussing an abnormal fetal ultrasound with the Mom and Dad) So the people who go into radiology nowadays generally have good people skills.
Pathologists have virtually no patient contact, unless you count the little cut off tissue bits as patients.
Psychiatrists have more patient contact than a normal person can stand. Listen to the person talk for an hour. Then the next one. rinse, repeat. That said, they rarely touch anybody.
I would think about community medicine. No real contact with patients, some committees, lots of stats, and the lives saved are in the thousands. “Look Ma, my public awareness and vaccination campaign has achieved a 3% reduction in the incidence of this disease, resulting in a theoretical savings of thousands of lives!”
This is so difficult, because I don’t think I would like to be a physician of any type. I don’t even like myself when I’m sick.
But life is full of difficult things, so if I had to pick, I’d go with …
Emergency medicine. The only quality I naturally possess that would be helpful in a medical setting is that I’m very good in a crisis.
Orthopedic surgery. This has always seemed neat and I like the focus on quality of life issues. I know a few orthopedic surgeons with smaller practices, and I like this model because they seem more involved with preventive and rehabilitative care as well.
Psychiatry. This I find very interesting, and again with the quality of life issues.
In any case, though, regardless of specialty my career goals would probably be more along the community health, policy, and education path – I would be much better suited to working with systems as opposed to individuals.
Coroner/Medical Examiner. I can’t stand dealing with most people. So, I think things would be better off for both me and my patients if I only meet them after they’re dead.
I’m boarded as a Family Practitioner. And it’s been an enjoyable career, which used to include basic obstetrics, routine neonatology, and lots of being first assistant for many of my patients’ surgeries. So at one time or another, I’ve done a bit of just about every aspect of medicine.
But if I were to do it over, I think I’d pick psychiatry. Profoundly disturbed minds are fascinating.
Oh, and for all you deves who are picking gyn for all the wrong reasons, be assured that there’s nothing like delivering routine gyn care to really dampen down a normal sex drive.
Anesthesiologist, no doubt. I almost went pre-med for just that, but…well, circumstances conspired. It would be enjoyable to knock people cold for a living.
