The issue is I don’t love anything. Every subject in medical school and every doctor I have shadowed so far, I’ve been tired and bored by the end of the day.
See if your med school has a career counselor of sorts you can meet with. Talk it over with friends and mentors. Also, med school rotations are so different in so many ways from actual practice.
Maybe anesthesia was so appealing to me because it was buried in my surgery rotation which made the contrast even more dramatic, but it was the only one where I felt like I was actually doing anything. I was one on one with an attending, who oriented me to the machine and drugs, then basically put a laryngoscope in my hand. I was administering entire anesthetics (obviously still with a lot of help from the attending) a few days in. Every other rotation I’d gather data from the patient, which would then be filtered through the junior resident, to the senior resident, sometimes to the fellow, then finally from the attending, who would then make a decision that we would all implement. Surgery was basically waking up way too early, then if I was lucky and got to observe a surgery, maybe holding a retractor and getting pimped on anatomy for several hours.
I loved the hands on problem solving immediately gratification of anesthesia. What appeals to you the most? The intellectual challenge of making a difficult diagnosis? The idea of cutting someone open and fixing them?
Even choosing to pursue pain or ortho won’t lock you in. You can have a nice steady practice with minimal call and great income if you go into sports medicine. If you’re a thrill seeker cowboy type and don’t mind call, maybe ortho trauma. If you do anesthesia you can always do OR anesthesia, or even ICU. If you go PM&R you could do EMGs, sports, inpatient rehab, or some combination. If you have insufficient hatred for humanity, you could always do ER, which will quickly remedy that deficit, then pain fellowship.
