First off, I don't know if you meant the path for you was DO or FP. Regardless, as a college student, when you shadow ANY physician, you usually come out wide eyed and amazed. You could have shadowed an obstetrician MD or DO, and probably left thinking that that experience was the coolest thing ever, dude! I so wanna do that!
However, after you've been in med school a while, and had exposure to several physicians from all different specialties for countless hours is when you truly start figuring out what you want to be. It's the simple truth that in college, you just don't have a good idea of what the specialties are all about, b/c you haven't been around it. Now, if you shadowed a pediatrician, surgeon, or family doc off and on for one or two years, you will have a better idea of what the life of that particular specialty is like. That being said if you have shadowed a particular doc (like a family doc) for a long time, chances are you did so b/c you enjoyed it very much, which eventually leads you to thinking that this is what you want to be without having adequately explored the other specialties simply b/c you haven't had the exposure like you do in med school.
The reason I bring all this up is b/c I wanted to be a pediatrician b/f I got into med school. I even did lots of volunteer work in peds during my college years and enjoyed it thoroughly. I was "leaning" toward peds, but I always remembered a bit of advice that I had received and I am passing on to you. You must keep an open mind about the specialties all throughout med school. Do not be dead set on something and shut the door immediately on all other aspects of medicine. Well, peds did not turn out to be what I had hoped for, and I could not see myself living the life of a pediatrician so I ventured elsewhere.
Some more good advice is that when you are contemplating a specialty as an MD or DO, you must take in consideration what the daily routine or that specialty is gonna be like, b/c the fact is you're gonna be doing that for decades. For example, a day in the life of a dermatologist in clinic is gonna be rash/acne/rash/rash/pre-cancerous mole/acne. Some people may find that daily routine boring, but others are able to deal with it b/c of the other perks that dermatology brings to the table, namely compensation and workload. This brings me to yet another point. When deciding on a specialty, there are many factors that must be considered, such as daily routine, financial compensation, work hours per week, call frequency, set work schedule vs. unpredictable hours, stress level, patient contact, and what the job entails. Each individual has an importance level associated with each of these factors, and must do a sort of balancing act with each specialty. Meaning some people might take a lower salary if that means that they get to work a 9 to 5 job, b/c to them that's more important. There's no right or wrong to each person's importance level of these factors. It just should be noted that these are factors that need to be considered, b/c usually what happens with pre-meds is that they're so eager and wide eyed that all they think about is what each specialty does, ie ob = deliver babies, surgery = cut people open, anesthesiology = put people to sleep. So think about all that.
In regards to family practice there are pros and cons that come with that specialty as well, and they are directly linked to the factors mentioned above. I don't have the time to go into those right now, but perhaps in a future post. Take care.
