How do you find your way into that line of work? Is there an AHA! moment one day during rotation?
People wonder about these sorts of questions all the time: proctology, gynecology, coroner, podiatry. I think your guess is correct: you’re in medical school, you find you have an aptitude, you find the topic interesting enough, and before you know it, you’re doing it for a living.
I can see your joke 'tho. “Zomg! You’re a butt expert! And the lucky gyno gets to look up ladies every day. Ha-ha. A foot doctor. Ohhh … coroner, must be a necrophiliac.” It’s just that, erm, no, not that funny. Or you know, true.
I’m not making a joke. I’m legitimately curious.
It may be something that you take an interest in/find you have a talent for, or it may simply be a simple matter of specialists generally earn a better salary than generalists and the world needs butt doctors, so why not you?
You are the only one in your class that has the right size pointer finger?
Since I doubt there is a specific answer to this, this is probably better off in IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
If you have “I like big butts” as your earworm…you might be cut out to be a proctologist.
I wonder how much proctologists make relative to other specialists. If the pay is higher, I can see how some might gravitate toward it.
Me, if I was a doctor I always thought it would be cool to be a coroner or a forensic pathologist. My parents tell me that when I was a wee kiddo I wanted to be an undertaker. 
I knew a guy who described himself as a “knob doctor”. I asked him about the reasons for choosing his specialism, and he replied, I believe honestly, that so few of his peers wanted to look at and handle men’s diseased parts, he felt he could more easily carve out a niche for himself and thus have more recognition in the field and make more money. I’d imagine that some people become ass-gazers for similar reasons.
Same reason Michael Levitt became the king of intestinal gas research.
I know this because his slightly more well-known son, the economist Steve Levitt, mentioned it in a lecture.
Old cartoon from Playboy. Overheard at a cocktail party:
They were made for each other. He’s a leading proctologist and she’s a pain in the ass.
I asked an acquaintance of mine this question when he told me he had matched in urology. He said, ‘I like surgery, call is minimal, money is good’. It’s usually something like that.
I wonder how easy it is to find an opening…
For the record, the preferred term nowadays is colorectal surgeons. The term proctology has fallen out of favor.
I agree with Attack that the lifestyle issue is probably a big draw. There are a lot of people who enjoy doing surgery but hate the lifestyle that a general surgeon lead (horribly long hours and relatively low pay for how hard they work). Those kinds of people often pursue subspecialties in surgery.
There are other reasons someone might like colorectal surgery though. Bad hemorrhoids can be extremely painful and embarrassing. Some people might find it rewarding to try to bring people relief from those kinds of problems. Colon cancer is very common and unfortunately still kills a lot of people, so it’s easy to see how some docs would want to be part of trying to stop such a nasty disease.
It’s a fairly rewarding profession…on the whole.
And, like a dermatologist, there are relatively few emergency surgeries in the subspecialty. Some people who like to do surgery want a 9-5 with a predictable surgical schedule.
And you just never know what’s going to ping your radar. I never, ever would have thought that I could stand being a wound care nurse until I worked a shift with one. Y’know, it’s actually pretty damn cool seeing people’s bones through holes in their skin! I mean, gross, absolutely, but cool. I’m not changing my career plans at the moment, but yeah, I could totally do that if the NICU thing doesn’t work out.
Me…I don’t understand how people end up as tax accountants. I mean, gods, really? What little kid decides he wants to do that when he grows up? You add up numbers all day? Or type them into computers? Or look at paperwork for more information about more numbers? Just kill me know. But hey, different strokes for different folks, and all that.
Well, NOW I do.
Where do I sign up? I could stand to make some more money, you know. And I’ve always been told I’m a pain in the ass.
In medical school, they graduated at the bottom of the class.
[Faux Jeff Foxworthy] If you like wearing latex gloves…you might be cut out to be a proctologist. [fjf]
There is still a billboard for a proctologist going out to Coney Island on the F Train in NYC. Until I saw it, I thought that proctology was a made up subspeciality.