Choosing specialty after living through quarantine

[HockeyGuy2772]

After all of this extra time being able to spend at home with SO/family while everything has been shut down, is anyone leaning towards a specialty with more a work/life balance to spend more time at home? Talking to some friends I hear them say how they cant imagine working a ton after residency since they know what its like to spend a bunch of time at home.

Thought it could be an interesting thing to talk about

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[Cornfed101]

Well the quarantine didn’t really change my mind, but I kinda like my wife and kids so lifestyle is important to me.

 

[Sardonix]

* Laughs in family medicine

 

[EmilKraepelin55]

I hear you. After my psych rotation, I am thinking that given my interest in the subject matter/patient population and the hours of the job (even during residency and fellowship) it seems the best option. Of course the biggest priority for me is my family, and being in a specialty like psych gives me some leeway to be present with them. I also stopped playing in a band, writing music with others and stopped frequently performing live since starting med school. I would like to start doing that again at some point. But I am also interested in neuro, so we will see. I haven’t had that rotation yet and I know neuro can also be decent post-residency depending on the path you choose.

 

[Neopolymath]

I'm glad I didn't have an app set up to pivot to psych because it would have made a hard choice even harder.

Psych is amazing and for someone like me, better than Derm by far.

 

[EmilKraepelin55]

I'm glad I didn't have an app set up to pivot to psych because it would have made a hard choice even harder.

Psych is amazing and for someone like me, better than Derm by far.

Hah yeah. For me personally if I had the app to do derm, I probably wouldn’t even consider it still. Skin is, like, mildly interesting I guess. That and I don’t think I am objectively pretty enough to do it haha! Totally kidding.

 

[slowthai]

I'm glad I didn't have an app set up to pivot to psych because it would have made a hard choice even harder.

Psych is amazing and for someone like me, better than Derm by far.

Funny, I've thought seriously about psych too because it gives you the most control and flexibility (easy to start your own practice with low overhead and being able to work in many different practice setups at once) out of all the specialties. The thing is that I currently have almost zero interest in the pathology. I guess we'll see what happens third year.

 

[Neopolymath]

Funny, I've thought seriously about psych too because it gives you the most control and flexibility (easy to start your own practice with low overhead and being able to work in many different practice setups at once) out of all the specialties. The thing is that I currently have almost zero interest in the pathology. I guess we'll see what happens third year.

Get LORs early and often. They can always be edited if things change or not used if better ones come along. The pandemic showed a lot of people that this is important. I'm sitting pretty while some of my classmates are sweating bullets about LORs right now.

 

[Drrrrrr. Celty]

Just remember that it's easier to work 60 hours in something you like than 30 hours in something you're only half heartedly invested in.

Likewise remember that a lot of fields may have harder residencies than their practice and beyond that subspecialties may potentially be even more satisfying.

 

[INTPsych]

I personnaly think that Psych is the best thing ever. Only thing bad with the residency is the other interns( who likely joined for the wrong reason). One of them came into psych because she did'nt know what to do with her life. The other because she wanted to try out psych, it seems easy.( She has 0 bedside manners).


Crazy thing is that being a functional and notmal-ish psych residents is currently regarded as anomaly because of the vast majority of mildly psychiatrically impaired residents( drug/alcool abuse; burned-out; Personnality disorders +++; Asperger Disorder(also a lot of them); anxiety generalized;..etc)

Besides the toxic residents with bad temper and personnalities. Psych is the best! Same for the patients.

 

[hallowmann]

Choose the specialty based on what you like. I wouldn't choose one based on a fellowship, unless you'll also like the general residency. The road to medicine is too long to choose based solely on lifestyle, but it certainly can be a big component. Remember too that part time work is also manageable in many fields in medicine. Not everyone is 100% FTE.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Just remember that it's easier to work 60 hours in something you like than 30 hours in something you're only half heartedly invested in.

Likewise remember that a lot of fields may have harder residencies than their practice and beyond that subspecialties may potentially be even more satisfying.

It helps if you like the specialty that lets you work 30-40 hours.