Emerg vs Rads

[fellowshipskillzz]

Hello all, I'm currently in pre-clerkship and slowly starting to think about what I want to pursue as a speciality. Emerg and radiology have both peaked my interest the most. I enjoy ER a lot because of its fast pace, wide range of problems/diseases patients can present with, and the fact that its shift work. However, the fact that ER doctors have the highest rates of burnout worries me. As for radiology, again the I enjoy the breadth of knowledge required for this, the ability to mix patient interaction and alone work if you do biopsies or IR, and the opportunity to WFH. But for radiology, I'm worrying I'm idealizing this to be a lifestyle speciality when it may not be (depends on the practice I guess?).

I was wondering if anyone could give me more insight into these two specialities, especially regarding their work-life balance and lifestyle. Or if anyone has more comments to add on what I said above, it would be very appreciated! Thank you!!!

[anonymouspls]

Neither are particularly good work-life balance specialties. Maybe emerg a bit but shift work is not for everyone. 

Don't go into radiology with the expectation that you'll be able to wfh. This is a end-of career move, and it's hard to come back from it once you go into it. For the majority of radiologists wfh consists of working at night to finish up the list because you didn't finish your list in the hospital. I understand people think radiology = lifestyle because of the ROAD thing but that is very outdated at this point, radiology is comparable to many surgical specialties these days. 

Honestly if I was in your position and decided to do emerg, I would do family medicine + 1 in emerg. It allows you to the same type of work unless you are hell-bent on working in downtown Toronto, and gives you more flexibility with an ability to have something to fall back on other than emerg. 

[rmorelan]

Does depend on what you want to do - I mean in radiology if you wanted to work solely in clinic work then sure you can work from home for your career ( you will earn a bit less without access to CT/MRI imaging). 

I work from home roughly 1/2 time time. what otherwise would be for most people a living room is a complex office of multiple standing desks and work stations.  

The polishing off of cases from home that anonymouspls mentions is quite true - which is good as sometimes you just want dinner to recharge.