saving a life feeling

[surgery2121]

---

Members do not see this ad.

What specialty do you guys think allows one to directly save lives and obtain the satisfaction of doing so?

 

[Rendar5]

trauma surgery, interventional cardiology, neurology if you specialize in strokes (though only be able to do it for 1% of ur stroke patients), emergency medicine, possibly infectious disease once in awhile, neurosurgery

 

[ZagDoc]

Pediatric Oncology. Gotta love those 90%+ success rates in a wide variety of diseases.

 

[BozoSparky]

you can stop quite a bit of badness in the ED.

 

[IHeartNerds]

i would suggest becoming a medical doctor.

 

[TexasTriathlete]

hair restoration

 

[Web MD]

you can stop quite a bit of badness in the ED.

So true. Erectile Dysfunction is a growing problem in the US, ruining countless lives every year.

 

[Dedikated2liftn]

Plastics, nothing brings a girl back to life like a new set of knockers!

 

[FlowLimited]

Fireman.

 

[Rendar5]

paramedic👍

 

[bcat85]

hair restoration

Imagine... the guy wakes up. And falls out of bed. What could have been a major head injury is cushioned and alleviated by a lovely mound of man-hair just placed on his scalp. It's a brilliant plan.

 

[BigRedBeta]

Define "saving a life". Do you want acute, the patient is going to die in mere minutes or seconds without intervention, or more if something hadn't been done death was inevitable.

There are very few positions where someone will die in seconds to minutes unless you do something. Really, probably only trauma surgery offers on a semi-regular basis. Emergency medicine certainly has the potential, but you also have to deal with a lot of non-critical illnesses and acting like a primary care doctor.

Critical care (either pediatrics or adult) deals with really, really sick patients, and will get the lucky souls who actually made it out from under the trauma surgeon's knife or away from the ER. They may come in stable and then crash, requiring lots of interventions and things like pressor support, vent management and ECMO. (Of course, the way higher survival rate in the Peds ICU makes it a happier place in general)

Likewise, cardiologists in both the peds and adult world can have a direct impact, but this would have to be a conscious career decision by these individuals to put themselves in those sorts of situations.

Of course fields like Oncology, the progression towards death is much slower, and thus how you define saving a life really changes things and if you view that as "saving a life"...

 

[Smurfette]

Many surgical specialties would count, depending on acuity. Neurosurg, surgery (not just trauma, patients can bleed out or get septic quickly), OB, etc. Anesthesia...it just depends on the scenario.

 

[rachmoninov3]

epilepsy surgery...being as this is one of the few diseases we can actually CURE a large percentage of the time.

However, as with anything in life if you want the life saving feeling, you also have to accept the opposite: life losing, or worse that you killed someone.

 

[ChemEngSoonMD]

saving lives and natural selection two competing forces

 

[Evergrey]

saving lives and natural selection two competing forces

True doctors aspire to enhance the gene fitness of their species, not destroy it. Healthcare should be a sin.

 

[Trismegistus4]

Dermatology!

Do you have any idea how it feels to SAVE a LIFE?