How to choose your specialty

One of the most important decisions in your practice is the specialty you want to dedicate yourself,since this decision will define your daily life in most cases for the rest of your medical practicing years, it’s a decision that should be taken seriously and also requires you to look for as much information as possible before applying to a residency program.

There is always time:

First it’s important to take your time before deciding, there is no reason to rush your decision based on a good impression or a good mentor being great in their fields, every one of us is different and you should take your time to investigate in to all the different specialties before selecting one.

There is always time to investigate, sometimes it doesn’t take that much to know what you like, many doctors as much as 50% know from very early on what specialty they like, although this might be true many of those are trying to be like a mentor.

Remember that there is also a chance to change your specialty during your first year of residency, so it’s okay to take a chance in a specialty you decide, there is enough time to make a change.

Compare to your experience:

During your clinical rotations you will have a firsthand experience with different specialties including their daily activities, routine work, common cases, physical demands etc. your experience is one of your best tools to compare and decide, although you should look at work and not the glamorous life of some attendants, it’s important to take in consideration more of the work being done than the lifestyle some staff can have, this second part matters but it should be secondary to your decisions.

Pay attention to which rotations you found very passionate about, also discard the one you hated for reasons of work and not people, not all places are alike so if people where the problem do not discard that specialty yet, maybe it needs more consideration.

Your personality counts:

It’s important to know how you take different situations, for example the way you respond to high stressing situations, your attitude towards repetitive paperwork, contact with patients etc., be honest about your limitations and your strengths many people like to be focused for hours others get desperate when standing still for more than 15 mins., try to make the best guess of the person you are in practice, what you like and what you really don’t like so your selection has more foundation in your own personality.

There is always affinity to one type of specialists and you may have a clue of this affinity by the way you handle your relation with residents, they after all represent the personality traits of each specialty, if you find yourself getting along great with a type of residency program students maybe you could be great doing what they do.

It’s what you do:

In the end of all your studies this is the most important thing to take in consideration, it being what you will be doing for the rest of your practice, remember that not all work is done in hospitals and private practices differ from institutional work, so it’s important to consider the way of life of a graduate in your selected specialty as well as the kind of work that they do in a daily basis.

Here are some important questions you should look for a selected specialty at the end of your training:

-Patients: do they take a patient and get to know them well, or is it a high volume a day type of practice.

-Schedule: how many hours a day do they work, do they have time for family and children, travel etc.

-Free time: are they always on call, do they have time to take vacations, are their weekend free etc.

-Stress levels: is it a consultations type of work or is the work more of stressful situations.

-Team work: is it a solo operation or do they work in teams.

-Data: is it required to do research, manage data and analysis.

-Solutions: is the work about finding new solutions and problem solving or is it more a routine structured type of practice.

-Teaching: does it require teaching or talking to audiences or is it more a person to person type of work.

-Income: how much do they make a year?

Take your own research

When deciding your specialty take some time to make a little research for your decisions, there are a lot of resources online to get more information about the salaries, work hours, specialties by personality etc. for every specialty there is, but don’t just take it from the web, make some real research and try contacting real physicians that work in your selected field, ask them all that you can and all they can let you sometimes is better to ask by emails, but a call should be quicker. Don’t take for granted what you red try to contact as many as you think you need to take a decision after all this is a very important decision for your own good.

Most practicing specialist will be glad to find a student interested in their field of work, and most will happily give you some time to answer your questions, just be sure to have them written and ready before you call.

Finally your decision should be made by your own investigation and the things you like and dislike, try not to take in consideration the life of other people since they have their own practice and everyone is different, as always thanks for listening to our ideas, don’t forget to leave your comments below, and visit us at www.usmleprepguide.com and take a look at our USMLE tutoring guides.