I am very interested in primary care and starting to think about residencies in family vs internal medicine.
Overall, I would say that all else equal I would probably choose family. I am drawn toward family medicine due to its comprehensive nature: I like the idea of being able to take on patients' children as my patients, continue taking care of patients when they get pregnant, and admit patients to the hospital as needed. I also think that I philosophically align with many of the family doctors that I have met, and if my goal is primary care I don't think it makes a ton of sense to do an intense hospital based internal medicine residency when I could do a family residency and actually focus on the skills I want to have (rather then spending months in the ICU and various IM specialties).
That being said, it seems that 1) nowadays most family doctors just see adults and don't actually do much peds or OB 2) there are very few jobs available for family physicians unless you want to go very rural (I don't). Internal medicine residencies with a primary care track seem to set one up for a more viable career (nearly all of the PCPs at my institution trained IM). As I said, I like the idea of doing some pediatric and OB care, but I would be willing to give those up in exchange for greater job security and the ability to live in a medium sized city (I am not particularly interested in NYC, Boston, LA, but I am interested in say Denver, Phoenix, Philly, San Diego, Austin...).
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Overall, I would say that all else equal I would probably choose family. I am drawn toward family medicine due to its comprehensive nature: I like the idea of being able to take on patients' children as my patients, continue taking care of patients when they get pregnant, and admit patients to the hospital as needed. I also think that I philosophically align with many of the family doctors that I have met, and if my goal is primary care I don't think it makes a ton of sense to do an intense hospital based internal medicine residency when I could do a family residency and actually focus on the skills I want to have (rather then spending months in the ICU and various IM specialties).
That being said, it seems that 1) nowadays most family doctors just see adults and don't actually do much peds or OB 2) there are very few jobs available for family physicians unless you want to go very rural (I don't). Internal medicine residencies with a primary care track seem to set one up for a more viable career (nearly all of the PCPs at my institution trained IM). As I said, I like the idea of doing some pediatric and OB care, but I would be willing to give those up in exchange for greater job security and the ability to live in a medium sized city (I am not particularly interested in NYC, Boston, LA, but I am interested in say Denver, Phoenix, Philly, San Diego, Austin...).
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.