General Surgery or Psychiatry

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damusiel

damusiel

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I am currently interested in becoming a general surgeon or a psychiatrist.
What are the cons of each specialty and how can I decide?
What should I choose and what are the common personalities of each?
(My personality is an INFJ)

Im compassionate, kind, caring and hardworking, but im impatient and lazy and not energetic as much. What should I become?

*no rude answers please, don't judge
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damusiel said:
No I am in high school
Click to expand...

Yes I thought maybe that was the case. The best place for you to be posting is hSDN. In short these are extremely different fields that essentially never attract the same type of person once they have actual experience with clinical medicine. Perhaps the mods will move your thread to the appropriate forum for you.

In short, medicine is a long road and anyone who claims to be lazy and impatient without a desire to change those qualities or improve themself should not pursue medicine at all. But you get a bit of a pass because you're in highschool and most of us are a bit lazy and impatient as teens. For now focus on finishing highschool and getting to college. If you still want to pursue medical school then and have shaken the lazy and impatient attributes then you should seek out some shadowing opportunities with physicians to decide if you really want to go to medical school.

You can think more about specialty choice in your 3rd year of medical school.
 
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damusiel said:
I am currently interested in becoming a general surgeon or a psychiatrist.
What are the cons of each specialty and how can I decide?
What should I choose and what are the common personalities of each?
(My personality is an INFJ)

Im compassionate, kind, caring and hardworking, but im impatient and lazy and not energetic as much. What should I become?

*no rude answers please, don't judge
Click to expand...

Hardworking and lazy?



Sent from my Nexus 6P using SDN mobile
 
Don't put too much stock in your Myers-Briggs type...those tests are given way more importance than they're worth.

Assuming you still want to be a doctor once you're in college, and have the grades and the resources to make it a reality, those are two very different fields of medicine. Since you only asked for the "cons":

General Surgery: the hours are long and hard for your entire career; the smells can be unspeakably bad
Psychiatry: gets little respect; your colleagues can be crazier than your patients; underpaid; can also encounter very bad smells

In fact, anything in medicine comes with the risk of foul smells.
 
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Looking at your post history, you are seem to be unsure of what specialty you want to go in and have asked multiple times for others to tell you what direction to take your life in. The answer you want is not quite the one you should probably be looking for.

For one thing, you are not yet in undergrad, and so choosing a residency is way beyond what you should be concerned about currently. Just getting into med school is a tedious and difficult process, which should be your primary goal for now. If you are too focused on what lies ahead 8-10 years from now you will lose sight of what you need to have done 3-5 years from now. Your opinions will almost certainly change as you get more exposure to what clinical care, medicine, and the various specialties are truly like.

For now, I suggest that you start planning what classes you need to take to fulfill med school prereqs. Find volunteer opportunities that grab your interest. Maybe you can try shadowing both a psych and a surgeon to see what their jobs are really like. If you have only started high school, then focus on getting into college.
 
Lol, your question is half a decade premature at minimum. I think you accidentally skipped some steps in this process...

Focus on finishing high school and getting into college, then focus on getting good grades and building your CV in undergrad, then focus on studying for and doing well on the MCAT, then focus on the med school application process, then focus on doing well in med school and then maybe you'll be ready to ponder on this question some more.
 
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Is there a sticky thread that has the standard response for high schoolers asking specialty X versus specialty y questions? If not, there should be.

Edit: That's not meant to be snarky. Every time a question like this gets asked, people chime in with great life advice that I think hSDNers would benefit from reading.
 
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