3rd year student (post core clerkship) trying to decide what to do with my life. One thing I’ve realized throughout medical school is that I really love the knowledge base that IM gives you, but I oscillate between mildly disliking and outright detesting the day to day of most IM practice that I’ve seen. I love talking to smart internists who seemingly know everything across all organ systems. I love thinking about physiology and pathophysiology and pharmacology. How entresto works. How orthodromic AVRT works. How hepatorenal syndrome works. Infectious disease. Wanna talk about high anion gap metabolic acidosis? I’d love to. LFTs? Why yes.
However the day to day of IM I find tough. The sitting at a computer for 90% of your day (unless your rounding of course). The notes. The discharge summaries. Titrating GDMT over a few days. Outpatient clinic. The lack of acuity (as far as I’ve seen at least). The hours of rounding. The new admission that you go see in 3 hours cause there’s nothing super acute and they can wait for a while. You went and saw the patient and now it’s time for a long note. Etc. I fully recognize that I haven’t seen all that IM has to offer with my 2-3 months of rotating. This has just been my experience.
So what are some IM-lite specialties that approach the knowledge of an internist as much as reasonable, but have a bit more..spunk? Excitement? I’ve considered doing IM and then fellowship, but I’m not sure how happy I’d be in an IM residency and 3 years isn’t a short amount of time.
However the day to day of IM I find tough. The sitting at a computer for 90% of your day (unless your rounding of course). The notes. The discharge summaries. Titrating GDMT over a few days. Outpatient clinic. The lack of acuity (as far as I’ve seen at least). The hours of rounding. The new admission that you go see in 3 hours cause there’s nothing super acute and they can wait for a while. You went and saw the patient and now it’s time for a long note. Etc. I fully recognize that I haven’t seen all that IM has to offer with my 2-3 months of rotating. This has just been my experience.
So what are some IM-lite specialties that approach the knowledge of an internist as much as reasonable, but have a bit more..spunk? Excitement? I’ve considered doing IM and then fellowship, but I’m not sure how happy I’d be in an IM residency and 3 years isn’t a short amount of time.