MD & DO Specialty that would fit my personality?

[contemplating2005]

Trying to figure out what medical specialty I should pursue. After working for a bit and knowing myself I know that there are things that I don't like. Which specialty would you suggest I should look into that would best fit me given my preference and personality?

• I am a more chill and laid back type of person. Type B
• I don't like fast pace, high acuity, very stressful conditions (I can handle stress, but too much is not good), ER is out of the question
• interestingly enough I worked in fast pace environments before and I tend to be really sharp, efficient, and fast. However that comes from anxiety. Not a way I want to make a living day in and day out.
• I prefer more lifestyle friendly m-f 8-5 no on calls, have my weekends etc...
• Don't really like random walk ins dealing with the unknown of what will come through the door, prefer to know what type of patients will be coming in at what time and be prepared
• least likely to be sued. Getting sued would be incredibly stressful. Probably no on pediatrics since I know parents can be over bearing and kids can cry a lot.

What specialty should I take a look at?

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[Mad Jack]

P s y c h i a t r y
PM&R
ID
A&I
Sleep med
Path
Outpatient neurology
Derm

 

[Dr. Doctor MD]

Trying to figure out what medical specialty I should pursue. After working for a bit and knowing myself I know that there are things that I don't like. Which specialty would you suggest I should look into that would best fit me given my preference and personality?

• I am a more chill and laid back type of person
• I don't like fast pace, high acuity, very stressful conditions (I can handle stress, but too much is not good), ER is out of the question
• I prefer more lifestyle friendly m-f 8-5 no on calls, have my weekends etc...
• Don't really like random walk ins dealing with the unknown of what will come through the door, prefer to know what type of patients will be coming in at what time and be prepared
• least likely to be sued. Probably no on pediatrics since I know parents can be over bearing and kids can cry a lot.

What specialty should I take a look at?

Any of the Internal Medicine subspecialties, but specifically Endo/Rheum/ID/Pulm/Heme/Onc. These will allow for a 9-5 and most of your patients will be following up with you many times over their treatment period. Not a whole lot of surprises due to continuity and getting patients via referrals. You can have a nice slow pace with thorough visits.

Family medicine
Technically you don't know what will walk in the door and sometimes you get some crazy stuff, but about 10 things will likely make up 90% of your visits. Also much faster pace, but not too crazy.

 

[idkididk]

Ophtho

 

[sloop]

This sounds a lot like psychiatry. Exceptions are that:

You will still have call, at least during training. If you do any inpatient work as an attending, you will probably have to do some degree of home call. Depending on whether you have residents or not and how many beds you cover, this could be more or less demanding but generally wouldn’t be a huge deal. If you do outpatient work, you generally won’t have call.

You can get a fair bit of variety in psychiatry but it will be within the general domain of primary psychiatric illness like 90% of the time. Some practice environments have more variety and some have less.

Everything else you said is unequivocally met in psychiatry.

 

[Redpancreas]

Trying to figure out what medical specialty I should pursue. After working for a bit and knowing myself I know that there are things that I don't like. Which specialty would you suggest I should look into that would best fit me given my preference and personality?

• I am a more chill and laid back type of person
• I don't like fast pace, high acuity, very stressful conditions (I can handle stress, but too much is not good), ER is out of the question
• I prefer more lifestyle friendly m-f 8-5 no on calls, have my weekends etc...
• Don't really like random walk ins dealing with the unknown of what will come through the door, prefer to know what type of patients will be coming in at what time and be prepared
• least likely to be sued. Probably no on pediatrics since I know parents can be over bearing and kids can cry a lot.

What specialty should I take a look at?

Part time, low-Acuity Urgent Care. If don't like that, maybe you should include some redeeming qualities about yourself.

 

[trobinsonmd]

If you don't like fast paced, probably not derm or anything surgery related... I don't have a lot of surgical experience, but I'm in derm and some of the clinics I've seen are absolute zoos wrt patient volume and turnaround... PMR is pretty low stress, pathology is okay, maybe neurology

 

[Pico11]

Sounds very similar to myself - I chose Path for all the reasons in the OP. Considered derm and rads but they were too fast paced which would have been stress provoking on a daily basis.

 

[contemplating2005]

Sounds very similar to myself - I chose Path for all the reasons in the OP. Considered derm and rads but they were too fast paced which would have been stress provoking on a daily basis.

any other suggestions?

 

[RickHarrison]

I am glad you asked this question. It's exactly how I feel.

For what its worth I have done a PM&R rotation hoping it would have all the things you described. It was definitely laid back for some clinics but hectic for others. People think its an easy job but the attendings worked just as hard as most other specialties.

 

[The Knife & Gun Club]

I think you would do well in rheumatology. Money is ok (not great), but lifestyle is excellent (Who’s ever heard of a rheum emergency?) and practice is pretty interesting.

There’s lots of cool stuff going on in the field too with the advent of better understanding of the diseases and new biologic drugs

 

[Freeinfinity]

I think the AAMC has this big questionnaire that you can fill out online. It gives you a rough framework for which subspecialties may be most suited for you. Not the most precise but it can certainly help you narrow a lot of things down for you. Good luck.

 

[raiderette]

How to Choose a Medical Specialty
Start with this. Unfortunately, you may not actually know the answers to the questions because you haven't been through rotations.