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What do you want to specialize in and why?


Sarah_2020

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it really depends on the person... lots of people find family med to be boring and unfulfilling and other people love it

 

trust me. once you go through clerkships, family medicine will seem like a great if not the best career choice. Just remember in 10 years everything will become routine and "boring". The only thing you'll have left is lifestyle. Go through IM or a surgery rotation waking up at 4 am to get to the hospital by 5/6 am for prerounds then stand on your feet the entire day until 8 pm go home eat dinner and sleep so that you can wake up on time and do it all over again...trust me. Family medicine is the true lifestyle specialty and if practiced correctly offers immense reward.
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GIM is currently 4 years as some people have said, although it isn't necessarily an "official" sub-specialty of IM. A resident in IM I talked to recently said that GIM will continue to be 4 years for at least the next ten years, so I think you won't have to worry about 5, even though 4 isn't much different LOL.

 

Good to know. Still behind FM on my list, though....:P

 

I don't know what's going to happen to residency duration later on. I don't think those of us who are in med now will see sudden changes, but there's long been talk of extending FM to 3 years, and then I've heard someone high on the food chain talking about wanting to shorten specialist residencies, as well.

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i cant figure out what i want to do for the life of me... i have ruled out a few though.

 

Ruled out:

OB/Gyn - uhh self explanatory

Derm/Rad/Opho/any subspecialty IM - cant imagine myself working on one organ for the rest of my life

Psych - do not want to push psych meds on people and become allies with the pharm reps...

Oncology - way too sad

Med micro/Infectious disease - i did not enjoy micro...

Pathology - ok forensics is the only one i see myself doing here.

 

Everything else could be saweet

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Assuming I get into medschool, I want to pursue a clinician-scientist route with a 40/60 split, respectively. I'm hearing varied opinions from the many clinician-scientists I've spoken to at the Hospitals in Toronto. Any insight from current students in their clerkship years? Are there some disciplines that should definitely be avoided (due to time constraints for research, etc)?

 

(Figured I might get asked this question at an interview as well, so I'm starting to think about it).

 

Many Thanks! :)

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Assuming I get into medschool, I want to pursue a clinician-scientist route with a 40/60 split, respectively. I'm hearing varied opinions from the many clinician-scientists I've spoken to at the Hospitals in Toronto. Any insight from current students in their clerkship years? Are there some disciplines that should definitely be avoided (due to time constraints for research, etc)?

 

(Figured I might get asked this question at an interview as well, so I'm starting to think about it).

 

Many Thanks! :)

 

I've asked my old supervisor about this (I'm pursuing the same thing). He said people that do demanding specialties (like surgery) sometimes end up being heavily weighted towards the clinic with little, minimal research (like maybe 80/20 clinic/lab). But I also met a neurologist here who does it 50/50.

 

My supervisor recommended pathology. As he put it "it's not like your patients are going anywhere, any time soon".

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you could be that psychiatrist that isn't a pill pusher and changes someone's life, to be honest i think optimum mental health incorporates most facets of medicine, spirituality, fitness, sociality and various other aspects of life... a lot of programs just choose to segregate, unfortunately :)

 

i cant figure out what i want to do for the life of me... i have ruled out a few though.

 

Ruled out:

OB/Gyn - uhh self explanatory

Derm/Rad/Opho/any subspecialty IM - cant imagine myself working on one organ for the rest of my life

Psych - do not want to push psych meds on people and become allies with the pharm reps...

Oncology - way too sad

Med micro/Infectious disease - i did not enjoy micro...

Pathology - ok forensics is the only one i see myself doing here.

 

Everything else could be saweet

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ditto, my first year resident always seemed to be on peds, kids are fun, sick kids are difficult :(

 

see, I think that's counter intuitive.

 

You probably love healthy children. As do I. For that reason, I wouldn't be able to handle pediatrics because sick children is one of the most depressing things I can think of.

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see, I think that's counter intuitive.

 

You probably love healthy children. As do I. For that reason, I wouldn't be able to handle pediatrics because sick children is one of the most depressing things I can think of.

 

 

I have 2 grown adult sons and a 3 year old grandson. I know what sick children are like and I know that not all children survive an illness.

My eyes and my mind are 100% open, love.:)

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i cant figure out what i want to do for the life of me... i have ruled out a few though.

 

Ruled out:

OB/Gyn - uhh self explanatory

Derm/Rad/Opho/any subspecialty IM - cant imagine myself working on one organ for the rest of my life

Psych - do not want to push psych meds on people and become allies with the pharm reps...

Oncology - way too sad

Med micro/Infectious disease - i did not enjoy micro...

Pathology - ok forensics is the only one i see myself doing here.

 

Everything else could be saweet

 

Seems a bit early to be ruling out so many different areas. I never thought I'd enjoy obs/gyne that much, but I really have, and it offers some fascinating subspecialties like maternal-fetal medicine and gynecologic oncology. And any subspecialty IM? It's not like you ignore other organs if you become a cardiologist. Pharma reps are *hardly* limited to psych either - they're everywhere.

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Right but psych is the specialty most affected by pharma. I was reading one psychiatrist's blog and he see's many residents coming in with the view that they will not be swayed by pharma. But a few years down the line they are all asking how they can become speakers for companies.

 

Now of course I know you don't ignore other organs in an IM subspecialty, but if 90% of your knowledge is focused on one organ... well that's just too much for me. Let's just say I don't have a favorite organ b/c we need them all lol

 

My friends dad is an OB/gyn and he loves it and talks to me about the interesting cases, which I admit, do sound very cool. I just think I might want to see a male patient every once in a while...

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All IM subspecialties have to do their 3 year general IM residency - trust me, no matter how specialized you are, all internists know everything. They're the thinkers of medicine who love physiology, minutia, and rounding for 4 hours a day.

 

O&G is such a kick butt specialty, I honestly never thought I'd like it but repro block definitely changed my opinion. Though you will be making love to vagina for the rest of your life. No wait, if you really wanted to see men you could subspecialize in urogynecology...but who wants to deal with pesseries all day.

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Everything's inter-related: the best instructor I had in university was a chemical engineer who statistically modelled the immune system. He enjoyed reading a psychiatric paper I gave him about how auto-immunity, possibly linked to early in life viral infection, is linked to schizophrenia, you have to be the change you want to see in the world, don't box yourself in ;-), was the blog thelastpsychiatrist.com?

 

Right but psych is the specialty most affected by pharma. I was reading one psychiatrist's blog and he see's many residents coming in with the view that they will not be swayed by pharma. But a few years down the line they are all asking how they can become speakers for companies.

 

Now of course I know you don't ignore other organs in an IM subspecialty, but if 90% of your knowledge is focused on one organ... well that's just too much for me. Let's just say I don't have a favorite organ b/c we need them all lol

 

My friends dad is an OB/gyn and he loves it and talks to me about the interesting cases, which I admit, do sound very cool. I just think I might want to see a male patient every once in a while...

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