Specialty with Most Knowledge

[arshar94]

I'm curious which specialty(/ies) you guys think must require the largest general amount of medical knowledge. General surgery? Internal medicine? Other? And why? Thanks!

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[WedgeDawg]

All of them

 

[LizzyM]

Pathologists know everything... but too late.

 

[Mansamusa]

Maybe radonc because they have to add in all that physics knowledge? I assume emergency, radiology, pathology, family med/IM use a broad knowledge base on a regular basis.

But all fields use general medical knowledge because everything in the body works together and you need to understand how whatever you specialize in would effect or be effected by the rest of the body

 

[CaliforniaDreamer]

I've heard radiologists referred to as "doctor's doctors," although I'm not completely clear on the meaning of the phrase.

 

[Goro]

A clinical colleague of mine once joked that "IM people know everything but can't do anything."

 

[eteshoe]

I'm curious which specialty(/ies) you guys think must require the largest general amount of medical knowledge. General surgery? Internal medicine? Other? And why? Thanks!

A couple points:

1. Due to the vast strides in medicine and biomedical research over the last century, no one can know everything there is about everything. Each field requires it's own large and comprehensive knowledge base. This is one of the reasons why there are so many specialties and why even as an attending you still have to do CME courses/seminars/etc.

2. The way you set up the question makes me wonder if you're trying to avoid this super "knowledgable" field.

3. Just focus on the journey: do well in college+MCAT, get into med school, pass your boards, do well on your rotations, and go into the specialty that you like the most/hate the least -> become as knowledgable in that area as you can in order to provide your future patients the best care you can. And stop worrying about how you stack up in the medicine as a whole, that's just a futile endeavor - there's always gonna be that guy/gal that just seems to have an encyclopedic knowledge about many things.

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

Some of those rural FM docs really know their stuff. You'd have to of you were the only doc around for miles.

This is a dumb question, they all go to the same schooling and then just specialize in different fields.. So I'm going with the Dawg on this one. All of them

 

[NotASerialKiller]

This is a dumb question, they all go to the same schooling and then just specialize in different fields

You do you know that you still have to learn things as a resident, right? It may be a bit silly to try to rank specialties like this, but the training and knowledge bases are not identical. I believe nephrologists are usually painted as egg-heads, so they're probably up there.

 

[Swish16]

The information in even one specialty is too great to be completely mastered in one lifetime as one doctor told me. From my own experience I was most impressed by the knowledge neurologists and pathologists have.


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[AnatomyGrey12]

You do you know that you still have to learn things as a resident, right? It may be a bit silly to try to rank specialties like this, but the training and knowledge bases are not identical. I believe nephrologists are usually painted as egg-heads, so they're probably up there.

Yes... But claiming "nephrologists learn more than ENTs" is disingenuous. Trying to argue who learns more in what residency is so subjective and pointless. All docs know a ton about their specialty. If the question was which specialty is the nerdiest then that's a more interesting and fun discussion