Hsjjsjsj wrote:
Any MDs in the house.
Just curious on your take. it seems like most MDs are happy but I know a few who are miserable. So i was wondering what you would do differently if you had the option. How do you weigh lifestyle, money and interest.
My top 5 residency choices and subsequent fellowships as of today granted they will change significantly in next year:
Medicine-> GI, Cardio---i find these the most intersting, but worst lifestyle
ENT-best combo of lifestyle, interest, money
Medicine hospitalists-mediocre money butgreat lifestyle
ER-same as med hospitalist
Radiology-lifestyle and money
I'm a 4th year medical student right now who's applying in Dermatology. I went through a very similar dilemma as you. Are you currently a 4th year? If you're a 3rd year, you have plenty of time to figure things out during your clerkships this year.
It's difficult to balance the whole lifestyle vs. money vs. interest deal. I entered medical school thinking I'd do ortho. I did research in the field, enjoyed a lot about the specialty, but ultimately decided I'd be happier outside of the OR. Fast forward a year or so and I had found out that surprisingly I really enjoyed Derm. It also happens to be a great lifestyle and good pay, but as you probably already know, it's the most competitive field to get into. So I've built myself a nice little incline.
Anyway, enough about me. As for you, keep in mind that most of what you're exposed to in medical school are academic physicians, who represent a very small percentage of actual practicing physicians. While people in every field (whether academics or private) can be miserable, you might find different reasons in each for why they're miserable.
One of the first branch points in your decision tree should be "Surgery vs. Medicine." I only see one surgical field on your list . . . I'm assuming you have a reasonable interest in procedures in general (hence GI/Cards), but don't want the life of a full blown surgeon. A lot of the surgery residents/attendings used to always tell me "if you can picture yourself doing anything other than surgery, do that thing." Their view is a little biased of course, but it's a reasonable point to consider.
People love to tout EM for its "great lifestyle", but realize that 1) you will often have a swing shift work schedule for a while, and as a young doc you'll often have the worse shifts and plenty of weekends/holidays, and 2) you may not work the longest shifts of any kind of doc in the hospital, but you will probably spend those hours working harder than most. There's a reasonably high rate of burnout in the field, anecdotally.
I'm basically rambling because I'm really tired, but the point is that there really are a lot of pros and cons to whatever side. I would say once you have the Surgery vs. Medicine thing down, go with "Interest" next, before paring things down based on lifestyle and money. You'll find that the exact balance of these things will probably change over the course of the year (or even day to day), but ultimately you've gotta figure out what will make you happiest. I will say that the Radiology residents attendings all seem very happy, but it also takes a particular personality to really thrive in that kind of environment. Find your niche and explore it further. The best part about being in your position is that regardless of what you end up deciding on, you're going to be a physician. And that's a pretty solid accomplishment. While there are a few fields I would never want to go into at this point, I would still take most physician jobs over some boring Wall Street gig.