What if You Love Every Specialty?
Written by Arsa Ghazal
A big decision you will make during medical school is your specialty choice. I feel like many factors such as your background, personal experience, duration of the training, and lifestyle considerations largely go into making such a decision. This may seem overwhelming when you first start.
During your clinical rotations, I advise starting a PROS and CONS list on the notes app on your phone. During your rotations, write down what you like or dislike about the patient population (pediatrics vs OB vs adults vs geriatrics) and if it would be the right fit for me. Sometimes, it can be difficult to separate enjoying time with a group of people on a rotation vs truly enjoying the rotation you will practice for a large portion of your life.
I felt overwhelmed when I didn’t know which field I wanted. One of my closest friends came into medical school knowing he wanted to do Emergency Medicine and his passion only strengthened as we went through didactics and clinical rotations. However, it is completely normal to even change your mind about rotations throughout medical school. I started my medical school journey interested in internal medicine. I was very involved in extra-curricular activities and was the president of my internal medicine organization in medical school. Once I began my clinical rotations, I fell in love with every single rotation, which made it even more difficult, because — what would I go into now?
Start to narrow down surgical vs non-surgical specialties. Whether you enjoy it or have certain health or lifestyle limitations is up to personal preference. Actual clinical experience is critical to see what day-to-day life is like in that specialty. Keep an open mind and ask questions.
Ask your preceptors why they chose their specialty, if they thought about a different specialty, and a key piece of advice they could offer me—as someone a little lost in which direction to go.
My next step was to use FREIDA’s Specialty Guide for a clear overall view of specialties and sub-specialties to help you choose a career path. It provides a concise place for information on specialties.
Remember that every field and every day has its ups and downs, but don’t go into a field where you dread going into work.
Reach out for mentorship—whether it be a resident in a particular field or hospital you’d like to be at, someone who has helped you in medical school, or an attending physician in the field. Reach out to people and remember that building connections can go a long way—they’ve been through the process of selecting a specialty and often have pearls of advice.
Ultimately, I decided on family medicine at the beginning of my fourth year. Through my clinical rotations, I recognized my passion for community medicine and preventative medicine. I even did numerous rotations in various specialties I ever had an interest in (rheumatology, oncology, endocrinology, critical care, cardiology, neurology) – however, I missed being able to have a sense of community, continuity of care, and involvement in all aspects of patient care. I truly enjoyed the flexibility of working with a variety of patient populations and the ability to work in changing environments. I wanted to give back to the community that raised me and work to eliminate barriers to care for the underserved population.
Ensure that you decide on your priorities (personal history, clinical interest, lifestyle, financial burden) and make a pros and cons list of each rotation. Think about how you felt at the end of a workday – were you excited to go back to work the next day? Did you dread going to work? Did you feel comfortable taking care of your patients in the specialty? The best way to know what you want to go into is to get clinical experience.
You can do it. Never let anyone tell you that you aren’t fit for medicine or a particular field. You didn’t make it this far, to only make it this far.
