Is PM&R right for me?

[Striker254]

I'm a 3rd year medical student currently stuck between a few specialties and looking for any input from those in PM&R currently. I'm considering Family Medicine and PM&R primarily. I love the variety of patient ages ,problems, continuity of FM, but love musculoskeletal/sports med/procedures associated w/ PMR. More of an outpatient guy than a surgery/inpatient guy. Any advice? Lifestyle (time and pay) is an important factor to me as well obviously...

Also on the backburner due to lack of exposure, but potential interest, is anesthesia and rads. Kind of all over I know... haha.

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[fozzy40]

Have you done a rotation in PM&R yet? If not, try to set one up at a place where you can get a lot of exposure like an academic center with a residency program if possible.

 

[Louisville04]

I'm a 3rd year medical student currently stuck between a few specialties and looking for any input from those in PM&R currently. I'm considering Family Medicine and PM&R primarily. I love the variety of patient ages ,problems, continuity of FM, but love musculoskeletal/sports med/procedures associated w/ PMR. More of an outpatient guy than a surgery/inpatient guy. Any advice? Lifestyle (time and pay) is an important factor to me as well obviously...

Also on the backburner due to lack of exposure, but potential interest, is anesthesia and rads. Kind of all over I know... haha.

For salary, Radiology > Anesthesia > PM&R > Family Practice

For lifestyle it would depend on your contract. Anesthesia would most likely have to take call. On the otherhand, by doing call you probably can make more money.

For variety of patients, Family Practice > PM&R

For minimal patient contact, Radiology (Diagnostic) > Anesthesia (non-Pain)

For procedures, it depends of the practice

 

[theserbatron]

I'm a 3rd year medical student currently stuck between a few specialties and looking for any input from those in PM&R currently. I'm considering Family Medicine and PM&R primarily. I love the variety of patient ages ,problems, continuity of FM, but love musculoskeletal/sports med/procedures associated w/ PMR. More of an outpatient guy than a surgery/inpatient guy. Any advice? Lifestyle (time and pay) is an important factor to me as well obviously...

Also on the backburner due to lack of exposure, but potential interest, is anesthesia and rads. Kind of all over I know... haha.

One important thing that will help you delineate a little better is to consider how much patient contact you want to have in your practice.

In radiology, you will have minimal patient contact compared to some of the other fields you are listing. Also, your follow up with patients will be lower as well.

In PM&R, you will have patients which you will be providing long term care for. Furthermore, the issues that you will address as their physiatrist require a higher level of comfort and preparedness for many complex, emotional issues (i.e. if you don't like patient contact, how do you even begin the conversation of sexual function in a spinal cord injury patient?). Certainly not everyone's practice of PM&R includes this, but it will be a large part of your residency training and something you should consider.

The beauty of PM&R for me was that it regularly includes things like radiology, procedures, electrodiagnostics, acute trauma and chronic conditions, and long term care of all patients. If you like the inpatient side, there is something for you. If you like the outpatient side, the sky is the limit.

As other people suggested, a rotation in PM&R would benefit you greatly. There are multiple opportunities for students to do a summer externship or to rotate through a local PM&R residency program. This will give you the best picture of what PM&R training is like and where/what people are doing with it afterwards.

 

[jonnylingo]

You need to be comfortable with dealing day in day out with a non-quantifiable, undetectable, completely subjective complaint -- that is "PAIN". Sure, imaging and neurodiagnostics and exam help show/quantify tissue injury or defect, but only the patient knows the "pain". And in order to succeed in their eyes, you have to "fix" it and treat the pain. This, sometimes, oftentimes, is impossible, leaving you and the pt discouraged. That being said, I actually enjoy the nebulous nature of pain. There are many layers to address from psychosocial/behavioral to physical. You can coach the patient to make better lifestyle choices, and there is something gratifying about "tuning" the patient up with an array of tools i.e. injections, modalities, PT, OT, RT, Behav med, exercise, meds, etc.

 

[Eilat87]

so...where/when does PM&R trump those other specialties?

Happiness, duh.

 

[100YardDash]

I'm a 3rd year medical student currently stuck between a few specialties and looking for any input from those in PM&R currently. I'm considering Family Medicine and PM&R primarily. I love the variety of patient ages ,problems, continuity of FM, but love musculoskeletal/sports med/procedures associated w/ PMR. More of an outpatient guy than a surgery/inpatient guy. Any advice? Lifestyle (time and pay) is an important factor to me as well obviously...

Also on the backburner due to lack of exposure, but potential interest, is anesthesia and rads. Kind of all over I know... haha.

Hey what's up Striker? So, what I did was during the free month i had to study for step 2 CK this past summer was I approached a local Physiatrist who specialized in neurorehab and asked him if I could shadow him for 3-4 half days/week to try and get a sense of what an outpatient practice was like... I was already signed up to rotate at two programs in Tx for my early 4th year electives and I knew that these rotations were inpatient heavy so I thought why not try and shadow a doc at his outpatient clinic. In the end, that experience really helped and on top of that the doc became a good mentor/friend. I know its hard to take time from your study month for the CK to shadow but try your best to really hit the books now and finish the world qbank before that month and you will be able to shorten those 8 hour study days to maybe 5. My main point though is that te only person who can tell you if pm&r is right for you is you and the only way to get there is spending time in the field. So do ewhatever you can to try and get some time/experience early in the game so that you can make an informed decision once ERAS opens up in sept 2012. Hope this helps man. Good luck