Specialties Galore

“What do you want to do when you grow up?” is a question we all have to think about from time to time as we are in the process of growing up. I knew I wanted to become a doctor even when I was in elementary school. Now that I’m at the cusp of becoming one, I find myself pondering that same question again. What do I really want to do when I grow up? Saying “doctor” is not going to cut it anymore. The question now is what kind – as in which specialty I want to go into. Unlike some people who already knew what specialty they wanted to go into even before applying to med school, I really can’t say for sure which type of doctor I want to become.

To help us decide or, rather, to try to sell us the specialties in need of more applicants, the med school has put out a miniseries of sessions where specialists from a few different fields come and talk to us about the ins and outs in their field. Tonight’s session includes such exciting specialties as emergency, obstetrics and gynecology, anesthetics, and psychiatry.

I had already ruled out psychiatry last year after the mental health rotation. It takes one with a certain personality to go into that specialty, and I am not it.

OB/GYN – nine years of training?! Isn’t that how long people doing neurosurgery have to suffer through? Anyway, I’ll be doing that rotation later this year. I’ll have a better idea after the rotation.

Anesthetics sounds interesting. It’s pretty cool to be able to suspend someone somewhere between deep sleep and death and bring him back at your command, but a good anesthetist means a really bored anesthetist. A busy one generally means trouble. As the saying goes, the job of anesthesiology means being “bored shitless 95% of the time and scared shitless the other 5% of the time.” At this point, I am pretty ambivalent about this specialty.

Emergency actually sounds cool – four ten-hour shifts per week, no calls, no overtime if you don’t want it. It’s completely unpredictable; you never know who’s walking through those doors next. The training isn’t too long – “only” six years – definitely worth considering.

I’ll see what specialties the next session will bring us.