Intellectually stimulating specialty with procedures

[Arewestilldoingphrasing?]

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What are some intellectually stimulating specialties (i.e. variety) with a hands on component? Cards seems to fit the bill but what else?

 

[Dr. Doctor MD]

What are some intellectually stimulating specialties (i.e. variety) with a hands on component? Cards seems to fit the bill but what else?

IR, DERM, GI, Interventional Cards, Optho, OB/GYN, Pain - Not sure how intellectually stimulating each one of those are individually but that's for you to decide.

 

[Lnsean]

interventional cards / TAVR/ EP, IR (half reading and half procedural), vascular (kool gadgets), derm (eh). I don't think you can beat interventional cards tbh...also think it has the most promising future.

 

[sovereign0]

Intellectually stimulating is kind of a useless qualifier. Every field has boring jobs. There are cardiologists who do routine echos and LHC all day, then there's the guys who are placing Impellas in heart transplant patients

Like people tout IR being interesting, but a lot of IR's spend half the day reading studies and the other half placing ports or tunneled PICCs. Yeah, some of them are embolizing hemorrhagic kidneys or tumors, but common stuff happens a lot and somebody has got to do it.

Any procedural specialty can be really stimulating or really dry.

 

[Angus Avagadro]

Anesthesiology.Intubation, a lines, pa cath, difficult airways, nerve blocks, critical care, pain management, OB, TEE,

 

[nlax30]

EP (electrophysiology) certainly fits that bill in my opinion.

Heavily procedural oriented with a variety of procedures, eaxh with its own growing diversity within even a single category.

EP studies/ablations: There’s the various SVTs (AVRT/APs, AVNRT, AT) AFib, PVCs/VT

Device implants: Not just standard pacers and ICDs anymore but CRT devices, His bundle pacing, leadless catheter delivered single chamber pacer.

Extractions: Sort of its own advanced skill set that not every EP does but certainly a useful skill.

Non-procedural stuff: EKG interpretation, anti-arrhythmic medication usage.

With the exception of the 23yr w/ AVNRT, the majority of our patients are pretty sick with lots of medical issues and requires a lot of thought into what the best approach is for each pt, not too mention the mental stimulation of trying to sort through some sort of atypical form of SVT to decide where you are going to burn so that you treat the right type of arrhythmia without causing collateral damage.

Not too mention I still routinely use my general cardiology knowledge and skillset including echo interpretation.

Only big downside I’d say is the currrent length of training..... 8 total post graduate years (3 IM, 3 Gen Cards, 2 EP).

 

[OrthoTraumaMD]

Certain subspecialties of my field (Ortho), particularly trauma and oncology.


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[NITRAS]

OP, just keep in mind that pretty much every specialty should be like 95% bread and butter. . . you could do it in your sleep. If you have to sit and pause most of the time you are probably practicing outside of your training or at an extremely unique tertiary practice.

As an aside, I would think general interventional cardiology who deals with CHF, afib, and NSTEMI for 98% sounds kind of boring to me (how many left and right heart caths can you do before it gets boring) . . . but I kind of like being a generalist who only does a handful of procedures that are all low risk and low paying.

 

[ItsSurgicallyComplicated]

Surgery?

 

[FindMeOnTheLinks]

Critical care and anesthesia

 

[TypeADissection]

I will give 1 Schrute Buck if you can guess which specialty I'd recommend...

Hint: Begins with V. Ends with -ascular surgery...

In all seriousness though, all of the above mentioned have their merits. You just gotta find out what your jam is and how you want to spend your days and nights.

 

[WedgeDawg]

What type of pathology do you like? Procedural vs. OR vs. mix of both? What body fluids do you like dealing with (or hate dealing with the least)?

 

[lawrencewellsbourne]

just pick any field with the procedures that you like, then become a professor and do research in that field.

 

[Bacchus]

If you’re ok with bread and butter but occasional oddities, consider sports med. it’s a lot of DDD and DJD but if you can get a base of respect in the local schools you can do a lot of good while still doing procedures on your bread and butter.

 

[Aerus]

There's variety in every specialty, but every specialty also has a lot of repetition because that's how we become "good" at medicine - through repeated exposure countless times.

 

[Newyawk]

Certain subspecialties of my field (Ortho), particularly trauma and oncology.


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Really? No offense, but when i shadowed a trauma surgeon he literally spoke like this: "no no, man, take the screw out and put it back in that way. We might need another screw. Lets see."

 

[OrthoTraumaMD]

Really? No offense, but when i shadowed a trauma surgeon he literally spoke like this: "no no, man, take the screw out and put it back in that way. We might need another screw. Lets see."

He was doing that because it was more biomechanically sound to put the screw there. Maybe it conferred absolute rather than relative stability. Maybe it made the construct more or less stiff. Maybe the patient’s bone took a little more or less load based on its location and patient age and comorbidities. Maybe he needed a different type of screw- cortical, cancellous, partially or fully threaded, locking, nonlocking, osteopenia, far cortical locking...all of which serve different functions based on the bone and the patient. Just because you only see the tip of the iceberg doesn’t mean it’s not there.


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[Newyawk]

He was doing that because it was more biomechanically sound to put the screw there. Maybe it conferred absolute rather than relative stability. Maybe it made the construct more or less stiff. Maybe the patient’s bone took a little more or less load based on its location and patient age and comorbidities. Maybe he needed a different type of screw- cortical, cancellous, partially or fully threaded, locking, nonlocking, osteopenia, far cortical locking...all of which serve different functions based on the bone and the patient. Just because you only see the tip of the iceberg doesn’t mean it’s not there.


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To each their own.

 

[Rendar5]

I personally find EM intellectually stimulating (i.e. variety, as you said) w/ a hands-on component. In any field you'll find people who just look at everything as bread-and-butter, and find people who will add on an extra intellectual layer to it

 

[sunshinefl]

What abound ENT? Mix of clinic/procedure/OR and wide variety of issues.

 

[lawrencewellsbourne]

Lets be honest here. Wether or not something is intellectually stimulating is up to the individual.
i like the color green, you like blue.
What you personally find stimulating is a matter of relativity.

Half of the equation is what lies on the table (or gurney) and the other half is what you bring to the table.

That being said every specialty eventually becomes routine.
So my advice is this. Dont rely on your choice of specialty to keep you intellectually stimulated.

 

[nimbus]

My votes...

Ortho trauma
Structural interventional cardiology
EP
IR
Cardiac surgery

 

[sella.turcica]

What are some intellectually stimulating specialties (i.e. variety) with a hands on component? Cards seems to fit the bill but what else?

Pathology. You'll need to adjust the microscope all the time.