Autism and Radiology

[autdoc]

---

Members do not see this ad.

I'm 22 years old and am considering becoming a radiologist. I have always had a fascination (obsession) with photography, x-rays and anything similar.

As you can probably guess I have autism (and am obviously high-functioning). 😱

I have been doing various things on and off since 18 but am thinking of enrolling in college in the fall to pursue my BA in Studio Art with a concentration in photography and my BS in Biology and also attending and graduating from the honors college. I am intelligent and know that I will have no problem maintaining a high GPA if I actually do my work and show up to class. I took honors and AP classes in high school, had over a 4.0 GPA, but I got bored, dropped out, earned my GED and have been a starving artist for a few years. I also made the highest score in my state on the GED. And since I am 21 or older I can attend the local college instead of attending the technical college and then transferring.

I am very interested (obsessed) with radiology and am very interested in becoming a radiologist.

I know I would be an excellent radiologist because I am a purely visual person, thrive on solitude and am excellent with technology. I have also always had an interest in medicine and anatomy and physiology in particular. And I would love it.

I have an excellent relationship with a doctor who is an alumni at the local medical university where I live and know that he could help me with the "required" "shadowing," volunteer work and whatnot. I'm not too good with the typical touchy-feely volunteer work but would be excellent with any type of filing or organizing or whatever. He and I are going to talk soon and see what we can work out.

I would be the stereotypical radiologist spending all day at the computer interpreting images and having minimal patient contact. The intellectual aspects, the problem solving, the minimal patient contact, the highly visual aspects, the technology: this all greatly excites me!

I want to know:

1) Which area of radiology has the least amount of patient contact? I've read that it is diagnostic radiology but I have no experience so I really have no idea. Obviously, people is a very weak point. If I could just be left at a computer all day to interpret images I would be super-radiologist.

2) Do you think that a person with high-functioning autism could survive medical school and radiology residency? My biggest problem is interacting with other people and I know that this will be very unfavorable for me but the area I am interested in pursuing involves very little patient contact so I'm not sure why it would matter much.

3) Do you think medical schools would look favorably upon my fine arts degrees? They must get tired of the cut-and-dry bio and chem degrees and are probably happy to see someone who is more well rounded. I am hoping so anyway.

Thanks! 🙂

 

[colbgw02]

Far be it from me to tell you that you can't do something. If you have the drive, then I'm sure you can get there. Once done with training, there are certainly jobs out there that would allow you to spend most of your day in a dark room with nothing but the PACS and dictaphone.

Getting there, of course, is the difficult part. You'll be expected to parrot a bunch of cliches about the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship just to get your foot in the medical school door. If your medical school is anything like mine was, then your basic science years will be highlighted with occasional reminders that patient care is the be-all-end-all of medicine, and failing to show enough empathy will severely impair your ability to practice. Then, for your two years of clerkships and your year of internship, you'll be up to your nose in non-radiology medicine. Things will get better once in residency, but at that point it's still 4 years until your time is your own.

Over all, if you're in it for the specific goal of locking yourself in a room for 10 hours/day just to read films, then be prepared to "fake" all the touchy-feely stuff for the first 5 years (and to a lesser extent for the next 4).

 

[Shifty B]

The previous post was spot-on. Every medical school is full of this "empathy training" for the first two years at least. Mine was "Touchy-feely Tuesday". Fake interviews, fake patients, small group sessions. Most people without autism hate this crap, so you'd probably fit right in. You might seriously have some bad thoughts about hurting yourself or others though!

Then in the 3-4th years you'll be graded on your interactions, less with the patients and more with the residents and attending staff. This will be tough, because you could end up getting mediocre or bad grades because it looks like you didn't interact well with others.

But, all this being said, I think you can do it if you really want. It sounds like you know what you're getting into. My only worry is that you would go through medical school, do quite well, and end up getting bad clinical grades that would hurt your ability to match in radiology. You wouldn't know this until you were already 3 years in either. I guess if you're grades were not great you could always consider path instead. It also is more solitary and based on pictures.

My advice:
- look for a medical school that's very supportive of people with unique situations like yours. Once you get in, it's damn near impossible to get kicked out of medical school short of being inappropriate with patients or gross misconduct
- look for a school with fewer mandatory lectures/events in the first two years. Then you can stay at home and study for your tests and ace step 1

Good luck.

 

[osli]

Great advice above. Reading your post, my first thought was that I think you may be right that Diagnostic Radiology is a match made in heaven for you. My second thought was that the road to get there will be pure hell for you.

Years 2 and 3 of med school and your internship will be the major roadblocks. Because of your unique situation, having suboptimal clinical grades in years 2 and 3 might not be a completely killer for your radiology residency chances, but you will at least have to pass them and should do at least average in most of them to not put a serious anchor around your neck.

Then there's the intern year - the first year of residency for a radiologist. It's pure patient and people interaction, and of the worst kind too. It's not about passing or failing so much, but that you will be expected to function as a competent internist... people will be counting on you to do so. It's a job at that point, not just education. Making it through the clinical years of med school should help prove to both program directors and to yourself that you are capable of making it through the intern year.

If you remain serious about this, and find yourself many years from now considering residency applications, look for integrated programs that have less clinical months in the first year, and spread them more evenly throughout residency. There's less chance there that struggling in clinical months will sink you, and those programs tend to have less of a pure clinical environment in the months during years 2-5.

Best of luck in whatever you do!

 

[Neuronix]

My second thought was that the road to get there will be pure hell for you.

I don't think it would be possible to do well in clerkships and electives at my school without having a very outgoing personality, or at least the ability to fake it for a year. I think the risk of not matching to Radiology due to not getting high grades would make me recommend not going to med school. You don't want to be in the unfortunate position of being in the bottom 25% of your class because people say you have "personality issues", not be able to match Rads, and be $250k in debt.

 

[RisingSun]

I don't think it would be possible to do well in clerkships and electives at my school without having a very outgoing personality, or at least the ability to fake it for a year. I think the risk of not matching to Radiology due to not getting high grades would make me recommend not going to med school. You don't want to be in the unfortunate position of being in the bottom 25% of your class because people say you have "personality issues", not be able to match Rads, and be $250k in debt.

Completely agree with the above. I have a number of friends in my class who are all cool, laid-back guys, but have really struggled with the daily grind of third-year rotations and are planning on applying to radiology because they hate clinical medicine and want to get away from it. I think that their clinical evaluations have suffered because of this. You don't want to start out with the mindset that you will just grin and bear med school on your way to a life in radiology - it is a tough match and you really need to be able to excel clinically in order to get honors in rotations.

There are a lot of other ways to be involved with imaging than as a practicing radiologist - you may want to explore some of those other options as well as medical school, you may find that there is a better fit for you out there.👍

 

[MossPoh]

I do know at my school we've had some pretty brilliant students have to go talk to deans and what not because of their personality in the touchy feely crap. They are simply incapable of turning that switch on for the hour or two a week and have been pretty heavily penalized for it already. (This isn't even in the clinical years) You don't win many friends when you get evaluations that say things along the lines of, "I would never trust you as my doctor". If your condition is documented and faculty know then the preclinical years may be easier, but who knows about later on. Hell, even Radiologists have to talk to people once in a while.

 

[Dogg1]

I'll preface my opinion by stating I am a 4th year med stud that is going into radiology.

In my opinion radiology isn't a loner field. You are interacting with physicians through out the day. If you can't communicate it creates issues.

Now once you finish your training you may be able to get a job with very limited pt contact but you will always have to interact with doctors & other members of the medical team.

During training you will have to interact with a large number of people too. I think that you really need to carefully evaluate your situation & possibly consult people that know you to gauge how you will interact. My opinion is that the training to become a doctor can really suck at times and if you have issues with communication/establishing relationships it may really suck. In my eyes medicine is a team game now & you have to be able to play along.

Might be advisable to consult some medical schools to see what they think. Radiology is only the end goal, there is a lot that goes on in between and if you can't fit/tolerate it, you will be miserable - That I promise.

Good luck to you. I think there are quite a few fields in science/physics related to radiology that you may consider getting involved in if medicine is not the best path for you. There is actually a PHD at Childrens hospital of pennsylvania that is using imaging modalities to attempt to diagnose Autism in children at a very young age. Alot of varied paths to get involved in radiology with out have to deal with the patient care issues

 

[Goober]

I'm 22 years old and am considering becoming a radiologist. I have always had a fascination (obsession) with photography, x-rays and anything similar.

As you can probably guess I have autism (and am obviously high-functioning). 😱

I have been doing various things on and off since 18 but am thinking of enrolling in college in the fall to pursue my BA in Studio Art with a concentration in photography and my BS in Biology and also attending and graduating from the honors college. I am intelligent and know that I will have no problem maintaining a high GPA if I actually do my work and show up to class. I took honors and AP classes in high school, had over a 4.0 GPA, but I got bored, dropped out, earned my GED and have been a starving artist for a few years. I also made the highest score in my state on the GED. And since I am 21 or older I can attend the local college instead of attending the technical college and then transferring.

I am very interested (obsessed) with radiology and am very interested in becoming a radiologist.

I know I would be an excellent radiologist because I am a purely visual person, thrive on solitude and am excellent with technology. I have also always had an interest in medicine and anatomy and physiology in particular. And I would love it.

I have an excellent relationship with a doctor who is an alumni at the local medical university where I live and know that he could help me with the "required" "shadowing," volunteer work and whatnot. I'm not too good with the typical touchy-feely volunteer work but would be excellent with any type of filing or organizing or whatever. He and I are going to talk soon and see what we can work out.

I would be the stereotypical radiologist spending all day at the computer interpreting images and having minimal patient contact. The intellectual aspects, the problem solving, the minimal patient contact, the highly visual aspects, the technology: this all greatly excites me!

I want to know:

1) Which area of radiology has the least amount of patient contact? I've read that it is diagnostic radiology but I have no experience so I really have no idea. Obviously, people is a very weak point. If I could just be left at a computer all day to interpret images I would be super-radiologist.

2) Do you think that a person with high-functioning autism could survive medical school and radiology residency? My biggest problem is interacting with other people and I know that this will be very unfavorable for me but the area I am interested in pursuing involves very little patient contact so I'm not sure why it would matter much.

3) Do you think medical schools would look favorably upon my fine arts degrees? They must get tired of the cut-and-dry bio and chem degrees and are probably happy to see someone who is more well rounded. I am hoping so anyway.

Thanks! 🙂

I think that you would have a very difficult time at all levels of training. Radiologists actually have to be very effective communicators. While it is true that you may have less patient contact than other fields you absolutely must be able to verbally interact with referring physicians. In private practice these interactions will largely determine how successful you will be, often more so than your actual radiology skills. You also must communicate effectively with technologists, nurses and office staff.

During residency and medical school communicating with fellows, attendings other residents and med students will largely determine how people perceive you (and what kind of grades you get in clinicals and in residency evaluations). You will have to give lectures, participate in orally presenting cases. Even the introverts I knew during training knew how to "turn it on" when it mattered.

Personality is huge and almost always the deciding factor in interviews of all levels- med school, residency, jobs. If you don't interact well with other people this will be your biggest hurdle- to even get your foot in the door.

The bottom line is that you are going to have to learn to interact with patients, doctors and support staff or you will not be successful in radiology nor will you enjoy it.