Hi all,
I am currently an MS-3, new to SDN, and looking for some advice on narrowing down my future career options. I probably wouldn't resort to this type of medium if I wasn't having so much angst over this decision. Ok so here it goes: going through med school so far, three areas have been my primary interest, internal medicine, pathology and radiology. I love the patient interaction, problem solving, academia and comes with IM, but generally hate the mundane issues like diabetes, HTN, obesity, social/psyc issues and my brain generally turns off to dealing with these problems. I have always had a heart for radiology and medical imaging: spotting pathology and providing consultation to physicians, but whenever I'm down there in the reading rooms, my mind always tends to wonder more about the patients than just their imaging studies (like what they look like, PMH, social histories, etc). Pathology is also pretty awesome, being the final word on a diagnosis, providing on the fly diagnoses for surgeons, and all the laboratory aspects of clinical path intrigues me. But once again, I feel a longing to find out more about the patient in any cool cases that come by. There in lies my dilemma...Sadly, it's hard to make a FINAL decision without doing due justice with a full elective in fourth year, but time is very limited, and it seems like to stay competitive in any of those fields, i need to gear my MS-4 towards just one. My question to anyone still reading is, what are your initial impressions, if you're in or choosing one of these fields, what made you go for that field, and lastly, is there a field that combines ALL of them (ie. a field that interacts with patients but heavily reviews radiology and slides of path/cytology/ blood smears, minus any surgical specialties, i was thinking heme-onc would fit this description but haven't been able to be around it too much to know for sure). Thanks for your advice in advance, I actually think it helped to simply write this all out...
I am currently an MS-3, new to SDN, and looking for some advice on narrowing down my future career options. I probably wouldn't resort to this type of medium if I wasn't having so much angst over this decision. Ok so here it goes: going through med school so far, three areas have been my primary interest, internal medicine, pathology and radiology. I love the patient interaction, problem solving, academia and comes with IM, but generally hate the mundane issues like diabetes, HTN, obesity, social/psyc issues and my brain generally turns off to dealing with these problems. I have always had a heart for radiology and medical imaging: spotting pathology and providing consultation to physicians, but whenever I'm down there in the reading rooms, my mind always tends to wonder more about the patients than just their imaging studies (like what they look like, PMH, social histories, etc). Pathology is also pretty awesome, being the final word on a diagnosis, providing on the fly diagnoses for surgeons, and all the laboratory aspects of clinical path intrigues me. But once again, I feel a longing to find out more about the patient in any cool cases that come by. There in lies my dilemma...Sadly, it's hard to make a FINAL decision without doing due justice with a full elective in fourth year, but time is very limited, and it seems like to stay competitive in any of those fields, i need to gear my MS-4 towards just one. My question to anyone still reading is, what are your initial impressions, if you're in or choosing one of these fields, what made you go for that field, and lastly, is there a field that combines ALL of them (ie. a field that interacts with patients but heavily reviews radiology and slides of path/cytology/ blood smears, minus any surgical specialties, i was thinking heme-onc would fit this description but haven't been able to be around it too much to know for sure). Thanks for your advice in advance, I actually think it helped to simply write this all out...
