specialty with least amount of death

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t510

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I'm not a med student, but I was wondering what would be the specialty with the least amount of death involved. I'm sure I can deal with it, but if I rather not, do you think something like Radiology would be best? I find it fascinating. I'm the type of person that is serious but loves to have fun... might be difficult in some specialties?

I know this is an odd question
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In the pre-allo section. I think you ought to look around those parts, or better yet, get some shadowing or hospital experience to learn more about medicine in general and stop thinking so far into the future. You might feel differently about this in a few (or more) years.
 
t510 said:
I'm not a med student, but I was wondering what would be the specialty with the least amount of death involved. I'm sure I can deal with it, but if I rather not, do you think something like Radiology would be best? I find it fascinating. I'm the type of person that is serious but loves to have fun... might be difficult in some specialties?

I know this is an odd question
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#1 Of all of the things to differentiate specialties, this is one of the least important as far as picking and can have significant negative side effects if considered too strongly.
#2 Few specialties deal with death on a daily basis. Even fewer providers deal with death on a regular basis or at all in most specialties.
#3 Don't be "sure" of something that you have little to no exposure to.
#4 Virtually nobody would rather be around death than not.
#5 Most pre-meds, medical students, residents and attendings are serious
#6 Most pre-meds, medical students, residents and attendings love to have fun.


In summary, you are a self described typical pre-med. Figure out if medical school is right for you. Then figure out how to get in if it is. THEN try to answer questions like, "What specialty should I pick?"
 
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I've worked in oncology for 10 yrs (non-trad) and I can tell you it's definitely a specialty in which you cannot avoid death. Granted, I work on experimental drugs, but most people I met have passed away. Especially hard since the first three years I worked in pediatric oncology.

Lots of things come to mind: derm, path and radiology are probably up there. That said, outside of ER, critical care and oncology, most docs probably don't deal with death regularly.
 
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mimelim said:
#1 Of all of the things to differentiate specialties, this is one of the least important as far as picking and can have significant negative side effects if considered too strongly.
#2 Few specialties deal with death on a daily basis. Even fewer providers deal with death on a regular basis or at all in most specialties.
#3 Don't be "sure" of something that you have little to no exposure to.
#4 Virtually nobody would rather be around death than not.
#5 Most pre-meds, medical students, residents and attendings are serious
#6 Most pre-meds, medical students, residents and attendings love to have fun.


In summary, you are a self described typical pre-med. Figure out if medical school is right for you. Then figure out how to get in if it is. THEN try to answer questions like, "What specialty should I pick?"
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#7 it is crucial for physicians to be comfortable with morbidity and mortality as a fact of life and especially a fact of healthcare. We are expected to counsel or even comfort patients and families in these difficult times. Sometimes we cause the morbidity or mortality. Fortunately most people get the needed exposure by the time they have to step up to the plate.

As above: you are not expected to like or enjoy it. It will be a small part of your training and future practice, but you can count on it being there.

Finally, if you spend enough time with morbidity (endless suffering), mortality seems like the lesser of the two evils.
 
Ismet said:
You do realize that pathologists do more than autopsies, right? Like, they examine tissue of living people.
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maybe he mmeant be a medical examiner lol
 
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i dont think there is one answer for this ... for example i was going to say derm...but then what if you happen to deal with a lot of skin cancer patients...or you could say family medicine, because people are for the most part healthy, but you could happen to work in a town where an entire family has some genetic abnormality that kills them at a young age.....someone said psych...you can get a spate of patients who are not just suicidal but actually follow through with their threats (i guess however you wouldnt be the one dealing with them at that point), plastics....if you have a private "nip, tuck" practice but i can imagine someone working on a lot of trauma patients would see quite a few patients die .....scenarios are kinda out there ..but the point im trying to make is that there really isn't one answer
 
Ismet said:
You do realize that pathologists do more than autopsies, right? Like, they examine tissue of living people.
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I realize that, but those people aren't really their patients, and they don't have any interaction with them.
 
Death happens. People die for all sorts for reasons, it is a fact of life. Working in healthcare you will see your fair share and have to confront it. But you can't fixate on it, you can do a lot of good for a lot of people, sometimes it just doesn't work out. The thing to do is focus on the positive and have a healthy way to cope with the bad. If you haven't already started shadowing and learning about healthcare I would highly suggest starting that now. Decide if this is something you even want to pursue, there are plenty of ways to contribute to society through science without dealing with death and people. You really have to want to be a clinician for the right reasons. And we are all serious about our patients, but we still have fun with it.
 
Being uncomfortable with mortality is normal, but generally, you will learn to deal with it as you go through your training. As mentioned above, death is not dealt with all the time in most specialties. It shouldn't be the focus of your decision when you get there.
 
touchpause13 said:
Yeah, but that also has patients who may be talking about how death or trauma or some other tragedy has affected them. It seems like OP wants to get away from feels... so this probably wouldn't be a good idea.
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Plus suicide, and if it happens in an inpatient setting that sheat gets draaaaaaaaged out admistratively and quite potentially legally. I've seen really burnout some solid psychiatrists.
 
WillburCobb said:
Plus suicide, and if it happens in an inpatient setting that sheat gets draaaaaaaaged out admistratively and quite potentially legally. I've seen really burnout some solid psychiatrists.
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Yeah... my mom had a patient suicide on her, I was like in elementary school but I remember it vividly because she was so upset over it, and she's a private practice psychologist. I think there's no way for something like that to not hit you hard emotionally.
 
And of course, patient's with psych disorders can die of other things besides suicide, just think about eating disorders.
 
RJGOP said:
I realize that, but those people aren't really their patients, and they don't have any interaction with them.
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Actually yes these are really their patients. Medicine is very much a team approach. You won't get very far thinking one guy is the doctor and everyone else just does a job and couldnt give a darn. And yeah the pathologist may in fact have some direct interaction with patients. They may be standing right in the room during a biopsy telling the proceduralist if they have enough tissue. They are constantly on the phone advising the surgeons in terms of surgical margins, the need for additional procedures, etc, often even while te surgeon is still in the OR; there is no "hey it's not my patient, just send me the tissue" approach. And they are very involved in the tumor board discussions of the patients, in which life impacting decisions about these human beings are made.
 
jfirefox said:
Occupational med
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Depends on the occupation, though.

Everybody dies. If you don't like being reminded of mortality, maybe a career with life and death implications Like medicine isn't the right one. Most med schools start you out with cadaver lab for a reason.
 
You shouldn't worry about the death. You should worry about all of the things that are far worse than death that you'll see. Often, you find yourself not mourning the dead, but mourning those that are "living," both patient and family.

The least depressing specialties are probably derm and path. Rads requires that you do interventional work during your residency (if what I gather from the most recent standards is correct), which is extremely high acuity and you will not only see people die but might very well be the person that fails them and causes their resulting death.
 
Mad Jack said:
You shouldn't worry about the death. You should worry about all of the things that are far worse than death that you'll see. Often, you find yourself not mourning the dead, but mourning those that are "living," both patient and family.
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This👍
 
The specialties with the least frequency of death may also be the most heartbreaking because they are rare and unanticipated. Death in the delivery room is rare but heart breaking Ditto in aesthetic plastic surgery. Death in general pediatrics, too, is rare given that sick children are often referred out to specialists but a sudden unanticipated death of an otherwise healthy infant or child is also emotionally difficult.

We are all serious about our work. We also know how to have fun and to break up tension with humor. We all deal with death at some point regardless of our career path. If nothing else, you will have colleagues who die or who suffer the loss of a family member.

As others have said, focus on your studies and your other activities now, aim to get into medical school and see what appeals to you when you actually get in and see it day to day for weeks at a time.
 
Law2Doc said:
You won't get very far thinking one guy is the doctor and everyone else just does a job and couldnt give a darn.
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Unless you work at about half the VAs out there... in that case it will be shockingly accurate. 😉

/my VA is pretty good thankfully, but you'll run into people that would rather let someone die than do a minute of extra work.
 
WingedOx said:
Unless you work at about half the VAs out there... in that case it will be shockingly accurate. 😉

/my VA is pretty good thankfully, but you'll run into people that would rather let someone die than do a minute of extra work.
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That sounds eerily similar to military medicine.
 
Psai said:
How is it a whoosh?
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Law2Doc said:
He's saying the joke apparently flew over your head...
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F636xiP.gif
 
WillburCobb said:
This place is grand as fauck!







....I seriously can't wait to get the hell out of the Red River Valley.
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Yeah I said that too.
I kinda miss it now...
like there is no place to get poutine here 🙁
 
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