This thread is the perfect example of needing to keep an open mind during your premed and med school years. You may be 100% deadset on a career going into medical school - but that can and often times does change.
AGREED Doc Gray. The physicians I trust the most all tell me to let the specialty choose you. They say to keep your eyes open…try as many things as you can…and find mentors from as many different specialties as you can. Develop relationships, dig deep, and know yourself.
I can say that my bend is towards OBGYN, but I’ve never done that work. I may get into it and hate it. On the other hand, I may find dermatology fascinating. How can I really say if I haven’t done it?
I know my personality…but I may be totally surprised once I get into this.
In a perfect world, for me it would be ENT or Surgery. Probably general though I really enjoyed my day in the ortho OR, but I don’t think I’d go the ortho route in the end. I just finished up an excellent mentor program that had me shadowing a peds ENT and I loved it! I thought anything peds was out of the question for me. I have a child, but I don’t want to treat children. Or so I thought. I had a great time in the ENT clinics and I found for the most part not as many crazy parents as I may have expected and I was not crying constantly over heart breaking sick children either. I would not want to do Pediatrics primary care, but a peds specialty is not out of the question now. And ENT? LOVED IT! Perfect marriage of procedures and face to face clinic time. Plus, I like the idea of knowing a lot about one area. I talk the talk about the importance of primary care, but I don’t know if in the end, it will be the kind of medicine I want to practice. So many residents I encountered during my mentorship were med/peds so that is another possibility. It’s a 4 year residency that allows you to be board certified in IM and PEDS and also opens you up to specialize. However, I just really loved ENT. It’s a 5 yr residency. 1st year is general surgery and the rest is all ENT, adult and children. Of course, there can be fellowships to follow as well. So, it’s a long haul. Aren’t they all, though? I didn’t choose medicine because I wanted a career tomorrow after all. So, I love surgery, but I like patient interaction in the clinic, too, and ENT just felt right and it was something I never would have even thought about before this program. I also know for certain that I want to teach whatever specialty I end up in.
The more I get into this the more I see where my interests really lie and the more worried I actually get about potential ageism come time for residency. I fear I may be forced to enter a specialty I don’t want just because I will be 41 when I graduate med school. Anyone else have those fears? Does anyone else feel like it is nearly expected that nontrads go into FM or IM Primary care or maybe OB/GYN? I have encountered mostly encouraging and enthusiastic people in my journey. Less and less people are surprised when I tell them I’m a premed for the first time. That’s a good sign. I also get plenty of “I know someone” stories. Just the other day a doc at the hospital I was being mentored at told me a story of someone who became a cardiac anesthesiologist, worked under Dr. Oz during a fellowship even, and she started at 40. I hear lots of these stories so it certainly is encouraging, but I still wonder, even if I am competitive for say, an ENT residency, will I be squeezed out because of my age? Anyone else have these fears?
Shannon,
There are those days that im laying on the couch, after a long period of studying, where I wonder “will my body be built for this after medical school…should I ease up?” I answer in two ways: 1. [your] initial exposure was in Trauma Surgery, so [you’ve] been bitten by the “surgery bug” and 2. While the primary care specialities are absolutely relevant in the world of medicine, [you] didn’t decide to go into medicine for that reason. I know what that “OR” feeling is like; the process of scrubbing in on a case, and often, being allowed to make a cut.
I’m sure being a mom and “41” at the time you start residency might get some raised eyebrows. But with your dedication and passion for the specialty, it will all come to fruition. Heck, if you still want that “rush,” EM is a good follow up to the surgical fields.
Thanks, TJJ. You have confirmed for me what I have known all along that this journey is personal and we all enter into medicine with different interests and letting age get in the way of pursuing those interests is not being true to ourselves.
I did great in u/g anatomy and was just great at dissections. I even was asked to student teach a couple anatomy labs which I did and loved and that was great, too. I was fortunate to be in an u/g program that had a cadaver each year and that was all the push I needed to officially pursue pre-med. Spending a Saturday afternoon chipping and sawing at the spinal column to remove the spinal cord was beyond amazing and gave me even more respect and awe for the human body. Plus, quite frankly, I realized I loved to cut and explore and I loved the idea of immediately making a difference in the way that a surgical profession could offer. The times I have been in the OR have felt more “right” to me than anything else and all I wanted to do was to get in there and do what the surgeons and residents were doing. It lit a fire underneath me for sure and every time I think I’m too “old” for this and start to think that a quiet clinical practice is the probably the way to go I have to remind myself of what truly excites me and what I think I will be best at. I have a long way to go and much more self-discovery to do but I also have that gut feeling about surgery in one form or another and I feel it would be a great disservice to myself to get this far and not at least explore the possibility.
I have thought about EM, too, actually, but in the end I am not sure the shift work is going to be the best idea in the long run. Surgery of any kind will come with crazy hours and call (certainly during residency but also beyond), but with EM the shifts change often throughout your career and that could be an issue down the line. With surgery, especially in something like Otolaryngology the hours will be more usual and I won’t be flip flopping from night to day shifts constantly beyond residency. I could be wrong about this, though. I do need more experience and exposure to EM to really know, but it certainly is another area I have been drawn to.
I hope that whatever happens to all of us that we find the right path for us regardless of what the “right” path for a non-trad looks like to others. We have all come a long way that it would be a darn shame for any of us to settle for something that isn’t appropriate for us or does not make us happy.