Confused 3rd year med student

[carter]

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I know no one out there can make my decisions for me but I really feel like I need some advice and opinions from others to help me make this very important career decision.

Basically, my problem is deciding whether radiology is for me. Honestly, I am a person who did not find anatomy to be super interesting in medical school. I believe that might be because of the instructors at my medical school but I will never know for sure why this was the case. However, now being in my 3rd year, I am starting to find radiology very interesting. I am fascinated by how imaging is used to make the all important diagnoses in virtually every field of medicine. My concerns are that I will have to re-learn anatomy again very thoroughly and be dealing with it for the rest of my life. I doubt that every person who goes into radiology initially knows anatomy at a very high level. Is this assumption correct and is everyone usually learning anatomy in the beginning of a radiology residency? I am also concerned about the future of radiology and the potential "stealing" by the other specialties (ie turf wars). Basically, i always considered myself a medicine person who would eventually do a fellowship in an internal medicine field. However, I feel that my interests are changing fast and I need to know right now which path I want to take so I can start networking with the right people and working on the right research projects. I guess the whole point of my post is that how will i know for sure that this field is for me? Thanks.

 

[hans19]

You should go about it the same way you would for an interest in ANY specialty!

Do the _______ elective. Shadow _____ologists in different subspecialties. Flip through _______ textbooks... Get a sense of what the bread and butter diseases and cases are, and see if thats what you could see yourself doing for the next 30 years or so. Thats as close as you can expect to get without actually going through the residency and doing a year of practice first. You can NEVER really know if a specialty is for you until you are actually DOING it. Watching someone else do it is close but not the real thing.

 

[DCMDtobe]

Hans is the man. Follow the oracle's advice. 🙂

Personally I found radiologic anatomy 3rd and 4th year of med school to be roughly 10 times more interesting than gross anatomy was 1st year.

As for the concerns about the future of radiology and the turf wars -- basically I'd say don't worry about it. Rads is as well positioned as any field to do well over the next 20-30 years. Can I make you any guarantees? No. But med students have a lot of anxieties about the future of rads -- concerns that really aren't shared by rad attendings / sr. residents. (They have a different set of more realistic concerns.)

So, if you like it -- IR or diagnostic -- rads is an awesome field.

But will you really like it? I refer you back to Hans.

And don't get too stressed out about the time crunch. I'd focus more on making a good decision about what to specialize in. Plenty of folks don't decide on rads until July / August of 4th year and do fine.

 

[gourman]

I agree with the responses above, however I might add that some of the traditional radiology electives I took were boring. That is, if the residents or attendings don't engage you in what they're doing, then it's about like watching someone play a video game. It was only when I was on a rotation where I sat in a room with other students and went over images all day that I began to appreciate how to what degree radiology was right for me.

Almost all fields in medicine are concerned (rightfully, or not) about their future to some degree. Some fields are concerned that radiology is stealing turf from them.

Anatomy within the context of disease & its correlation with imaging is vastly different from anatomy in the context of memorizing every detail about anatomy for a med school test.

Good Luck!

 

[colbgw02]

I wasn't a big fan of gross anatomy either; I was more of a physiology person. But I don't mind the anatomy at all in radiology, and the more physiology-minded specialties, like medicine or anesthesiology, make me want to vomit. So don't worry about that aspect too much.

 

[cleothecat]

Radiology beyong first year is more a blend of pathology, physiology, and molecular biology. combined with a dose of surgery, a tincture of medicine, and a whole lot of fun.

Anatomy? 17 years post boards I still use my anatomy atlas for extremities and occasional other body parts.