3rd year elective help/advice please

[tvelocity514]

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Hi everyone,

I honestly have no idea what I want to go into because I love everything about medicine (besides GI/female repro). We have to sign up for 3 electives tomorrow for M3 year and I'm worried I won't pick something that I would like to end up doing. Ultimately, I have my electives narrowed down to neonatology, ENT, cardiology, nsgy, ophthalmology, peds plastic surgery, and adult cardiac surgery.

Things I like: I really love procedures and medicine in general. I went into medical school because I actually love learning about almost everything in the human body. I wouldn't mind working 6a-11p as long as I could get like 5-6 hours of sleep a night. I enjoy more cerebral things and really I just want to be interested in what I do in life and not get bored vs having good money etc. I would just like to pay off my loans but I could do that in any specialty.

I really liked Electrophysiology and the EP doc said I could work with him during the cardiology rotation so that's why that is on there. I really enjoy working with kids so if I did something, I would like adults and kids or do a fellowship in peds hopefully - But this isn't mandatory and I'm sure I wouldn't mind just adults also.

I got approved to do peds surgery on general surgery rotation and peds psych on my psych neuro rotation (but I don't think I want to do psych). I had derm on the list of electives but I think I would get bored after the novelty of all of the new and interesting diseases wore off. Contemplating plastic surgery (bc peds plastic surgery would be very interesting).

Currently thinking nsgy (have lots of research with a peds neurosurgeon), cardiology, and ophthalmology - but I really just honestly have no idea - and I don't know how else to narrow down this list. Apparently we aren't allowed to shadow at our hospital or this wouldn't be a problem because I would just shadow those that I didn't get an elective with.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated (especially if there are specialties I'm not thinking about). Thanks!

 

[URHere]

ENT, ophtho, and neurosurgery. All of your other options are fellowships that follow from surgery, IM, Peds, etc. If you want to make sure you pick the right thing for residency, try electives that are their own specialties, with their own residency programs.