Pros and Cons of specialties

[tatabox80]

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Hi there,
At this point I am starting to narrow down my choices for residency. I have it narrowed down to Family Practice, Pediatrics, and Psychiatry. Although, I have thought quite a great deal about the disadvantages and advantages of each I would like to get an outside view of the pros and cons of each. Thanks

 

[EctopicFetus]

Let me give this a shot...

FP - see everyone, long term care of chronically sick patients, really get to see a little bit of everything, No real fellowships that will narrow your scope of practice. Will never be an "expert", low pay, some procedures, very broad as you can do whatever you feel comfortable with. You can do Ob/GYn if you like.

Peds - Well baby checks for the rest of your life? only see kids, no contact with adults, parents are a pain, kids are cute and fun, can do fellowships so you can be an expert in something, low pay if not specializing, calls late at night from frantic parents. Patients bounce back quickly from most problems. If you do Hem/ONc depressing you get to do some procedures.

Psych - dealing with crazy people all day (I know non PC), sorta the black sheep of medicine since no one wants to deal with their problems, drugs have many bad side effects, chronic care as most patients dont really get better without long term meds, some interesting fellowships like forensics, usually patients are not high functioning members of society so pay can be crappy and possibly will be 1st on the chopping block.

 

[Poety]

Let me give this a shot...

FP - see everyone, long term care of chronically sick patients, really get to see a little bit of everything, No real fellowships that will narrow your scope of practice. Will never be an "expert", low pay, some procedures, very broad as you can do whatever you feel comfortable with. You can do Ob/GYn if you like.

Peds - Well baby checks for the rest of your life? only see kids, no contact with adults, parents are a pain, kids are cute and fun, can do fellowships so you can be an expert in something, low pay if not specializing, calls late at night from frantic parents. Patients bounce back quickly from most problems. If you do Hem/ONc depressing you get to do some procedures.

Psych - dealing with crazy people all day (I know non PC), sorta the black sheep of medicine since no one wants to deal with their problems, drugs have many bad side effects, chronic care as most patients dont really get better without long term meds, some interesting fellowships like forensics, usually patients are not high functioning members of society so pay can be crappy and possibly will be 1st on the chopping block.

Hey hey, we're not the first on the chopping block!!! for psych I will say pros and cons:

Pros: working with mentally ill, all your patients are different ALL THE TIME, no two are alike, variety, limited call, multiple fields of subspecialty you can get into (geri psych, forensics, child/adol, addictions, consult and liason, research, dual dx) specialty is on the cusp of many important discoveries, lots of autonomy, can do academics more readily than other specialties, great lifestyle, great compensation (at least from every psych I've met!), great hours, can switch into different aspects of the field if you get bored with one or another.

edited to add: working with psychotic patients as a pro!

Cons: working with the mentally ill, patients are often non-compliant and difficult to deal with, can be a lack luster specialty if in private practice, is on the brink of many discoveries so is just recently being more recognized as a medicine field, new meds with unknown side effects, will not see results quickly or possibly - ever. Requires an enormous amount of time with patients which can be very unattractive to some.

I'm going into psych - but only beause I love the field, I would NEVER choose this specialty if I didn't love the patients - you could seriously end up hating your life.

Good luck 🙂

 

[prominence]

Hey hey, we're not the first on the chopping block!!! for psych I will say pros and cons:

Pros: working with mentally ill, all your patients are different ALL THE TIME, no two are alike, variety, limited call, multiple fields of subspecialty you can get into (geri psych, forensics, child/adol, addictions, consult and liason, research, dual dx) specialty is on the cusp of many important discoveries, lots of autonomy, can do academics more readily than other specialties, great lifestyle, great compensation (at least from every psych I've met!), great hours, can switch into different aspects of the field if you get bored with one or another.

Cons: working with the mentally ill, patients are often non-compliant and difficult to deal with, can be a lack luster specialty if in private practice, is on the brink of many discoveries so is just recently being more recognized as a medicine field, new meds with unknown side effects, will not see results quickly or possibly - ever. Requires an enormous amount of time with patients which can be very unattractive to some.

I'm going into psych - but only beause I love the field, I would NEVER choose this specialty if I didn't love the patients - you could seriously end up hating your life.

Good luck 🙂

well said.

 

[jetproppilot]

well said.

Maybe so, but it proves that you should never ask an insurance salesman if you need more insurance.

 

[Poety]

I think I illustrated the cons quite well. Wouldn't an insurance agent sell it just to sell?

 

[fourthyearmed]

Let me give this a shot...
Peds - Well baby checks for the rest of your life? only see kids, no contact with adults, parents are a pain, kids are cute and fun, can do fellowships so you can be an expert in something, low pay if not specializing, calls late at night from frantic parents. Patients bounce back quickly from most problems. If you do Hem/ONc depressing you get to do some procedures.

This is one person's opinion. I'm a peds intern and I don't really agree with it. Yes you will do a lot of well baby checks if you do general peds, but I personally like seeing healthy kids! Not every loves to deal with deathly ill patients all the time. But there are also some really sick kids out there if you are interested in critical care! Parents are a pain at times but so far I haven't dealt with any who were worse that some the adults on medicine or in the adult ER! As for "low pay if not specializing" this is actually a lie. Most peds specialists take a pay cut compared to private practice pediatricians. Peds cards and neonatology are probably the biggest money makers. If you are interested in procedures, neonatology and critical care are probably the way to go in peds, otherwise we're pretty hands off except for lumbar punctures, suturing in the ER, etc.

 

[Mumpu]

I'm going into IM but strongly considered peds and gen surg for a while (went into medicine for gen surg actually).

Peds: Really cool people to work with, quality of teaching and peer interactions second to none and on the same level as IM, fun patients and very rewarding when things go well. Discharging kids with severe congenital heart defects out of peds specialty practices at 21 was something else.
Cons: Pediatric badness named after four French guys galore. If I were to practice peds, I would do academic hospital/specialty work which meant lots of zebras. I found that I could not justify to myself putting a genuine compassionate effort into taking care of a 3-month old who will die before they reach one. It's easier with adults in IM -- they lived a life and to me ensuring a good end to a life is the right thing to do. Thus, I found myself unfit for the specialty.

Gen surg: Instant gratification, get to work with your hands, get to belong to a somewhat dysfunctional group of people which can be a good thing (I'm a former firefighter/EMT, fire/EMS/military people probably understand what I mean), cool challenging stuff if you do trauma surgery. Cons: people too dysfunctional for my taste, unclear why so many surgeons feel the pressure to to be jerks given that nice surgeons are at least no worse than the arse ones, the intricate OR hierarchy/ritual, lifestyle sucks if you do interesting work like trauma surgery, view of the patient is too limited (incision clean and dry? passing gas? discharge!).

IM: cerebral, cool group of smart nice people, super challenging if you try to attain depth as well as breadth of knowledge, attention to detail is encouraged (no getting yelled at for doing a complete physical exam). Cons: chronic adult disease can suck (pick your specialty and your battles wisely), a lot of social work, every profession dumps patients on your service.

 

[DropkickMurphy]

My take on things:

Pediatrics
PROS
-You have to deal with kids
-None of the chronic adult diseases
-Continuity of care (if you're into that)

CONS
-You have to deal with kids
-Crappy hours
-Low pay

Family Practice
PROS
-Continuity of care (if you're into that)
-Wide variety of cases
-No shortage of opportunities for work
-Residencies are "easy" to obtain

CONS
-Continuity of care (if you're not into that)
-Lots of BS cases
-Low pay
-Crappy hours