Hopefully people's perception of you isn't why you chose your specialty
Your point is well taken, but in the scenario being discussed, we're not really talking about whether billy or chad will ask the OP to prom, we're talking about whether this should influence their career choice, and I never said people wouldn't have opinions about it, but that's really neither here nor there. That's certainly not a reason for the OP to become a pathologist or radiologist, which are two of the few that I can think that would involve little face to face contact with patients. People used (and continue to) have opinions about female doctors, black doctors... I would never tell a girl or black kid to not go to medical school. This isn't a perfect analogy and it's not to say those groups don't get annoying comments but it hopefully won't alter their path.
The focus should be on overcoming those obstacles to pursue whatever, not altering the path because of the obstacles. This is merely a matter of opinion, and
I certainly would never have the balls to discourage someone to do something over a computer screening because of my own concerns about that particular obstacle.
This is all to say, I am more than certain that there are IM doctors with stutters running around fixing people, and while I'm sure their patients may have whatever reaction initially, the stutter is quickly overshadowed by their level of competence as a physician (you know, the bottom line).
No, people's perceptions of me were not why I picked my field.
Saying that your colleagues' opinions of you somehow won't matter as a resident... please, those evals are totally subjective.
I picked a field that did not suit my disabilities as well as others might, and suffered the consequences. I am merely here to Devil's advocate what I think is sometimes overly saccharine positivity platitudes about disabilities. Real life is much seedier than that.
Residencies get sued for gender and racial discrimination. There are people here on this board who will claim they lost their jobs because of that, and also due to their disabilities. Notice I said claim. Also, I am not suggesting that this is common, or that because it happens (I believe it does at times) that certain genders or races should not be in medicine to save themselves the trouble.
I am saying that depending on how severe the stutter is, it could pose, for some people, enough of a challenge that depending on their tolerance for adversity, they might consider another field.
There are a few residents on here, myself included, who can get a bit flustered when a very annoyed and impatient attending starts interrupting them every few sentences, and get anxious, start having a disorganized presentation, and that is actually a very big deal. I've seen residents get hazed for not talking fast enough, talking monotone. I've been criticized just for the way I was STANDING during presentations and told that would affect my evals. I've seen these things translate to a poor eval for communication. There could be a snowball effect with that I won't go into.
In fact, I was directly criticized and given a poor evaluation that affected my subI, and could have my career if it had been an attending and not the resident comment, for "disappearing" when in fact I was attending medical appointments that were part of my disability accommodations and the resident was aware that I was allowed that time off, and it was scheduled to not interfere with my duties. I guess it just bothered them. It was also a major problem for me in residency. God forbid late afternoon the attending carry the pager for an hour.
I've seen med students and residents who because of their disabilities, moved a little slower, and seen how they were cut out of certain educational experiences, told to "hurry up," and just generally felt like the most hated member of the team.
Unlike in med school where any given team you leave behind after 4 weeks, in residency you are working with the same people over and over. Feeling like the outsider, the weak leak, or an annoyance, and people being as short as they are already in medicine, can wear on the soul.
That doesn't mean you can't handle it, or that you can't make it through, or that you should change what specialty you go for. I'm merely saying consider the severity of your disability, the honest impact it may have on your work, your stress tolerance, don't expect people around you to be ideally helpful, and go from there.
I'll say it like someone above did, be prepared there's a good change doctors in general, and in your residency, related to or unrelated to your disability, to be total dicks to you.
I never told this person not to pursue IM. I suggested that they consider the above. I suggested that other fields it might pose less of a challenge. The fact that IM might be more challenging in no way implies that they cannot succeed or should pick another field. So just because I'm coming in with a heap of disability doom and gloom to consider and I'm not singing praises about how accepted disabilities are in medicine, don't make a logical fallacy and suggest I suggesting things I never suggested.
