To take with a grain of salt?

[HeyJey]

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Hello! I am a first year medical student and am IN LOVE with the nervous system. It honestly is not even studying when I have to study this area of the body. I have seen many videos on youtube and read articles concerning what a neurologist resident and post-resident does and it seems like such a cool, intriguing, and science driven specialty.

My concern is this and please let me know if this is something that should be allayed: I was all gung ho for starting to lay the foundations for some day applying to neurology residencies when I came across the 2012 and 2013 Medscape report on neurology and less than half of respondent neurologists said they would pick neurology again and less than half said they were unsatisfied with compensation.

Is this a trend in neurology? To be dissatisfied more in the majority of cases of choosing this specialty?

Why would this be?

How can anyone studying this system day in and day out, not be excited and happy at the end of the day? (I am not naive however and know medicine isn't just about healing e.g. paperwork, bureaucracy, regulations, laws, practice options and settings)

Thank you all so very much for your insight concerning this baffled and curious medical students concerns with choosing neurology.

 

[tirral]

If I recall those surveys correctly, most specialties had similar response rates (~50%) for "would you choose this again." The thing that stuck out to me about neurology was that they had higher-than-average rates of answering "yes" to the question of whether they'd choose medicine again (as opposed to rads/anesthesia who both said "no" overwhelmingly).

 

[Jubears09]

If I recall those surveys correctly, most specialties had similar response rates (~50%) for "would you choose this again." The thing that stuck out to me about neurology was that they had higher-than-average rates of answering "yes" to the question of whether they'd choose medicine again (as opposed to rads/anesthesia who both said "no" overwhelmingly).

Yeup. If I remember correctly, derm and optho topped the list at 60% would choose medicine again, Neuro was about average. It comes down to whether or not you choose the right field for the right reasons. IMO, this stuff is unpredictable, what's a ROAD specialty now may or may not be a ROAD specialty 20 years from now (see anesthesia); the people that end up happy are the ones who choose a field for the content rather than the lifestyle/pay.

 

[Elipsis]

Honestly, when I read that survey I assumed that the numbers stayed close to 50% regardless of specialty because 50% of human beings are unhappy at baseline.

 

[pietachok]

I think one of the factors to consider in interpreting such data is that Neurology is one of the less competitive residencies to match into (go look at NRMP match data). I suspect that there are people going into Neuro who really wanted to be in a different field.