Medical Careers: Choosing A Specialty

One of the biggest decisions students face in medical school is deciding which area of medicine they want to specialize in, if any. Some people know from the beginning, like Christina from Grey’s Anatomy.

There are many different factors to consider. How much do you want to work? Do you want to have a family? Do you want to have patient contact frequently? Do you want to work on solving common maladies and sending people out in the world healthy or do you want to work on complex medical mysteries?

Once you figure out what is that you want, you have to face the music about what you can actually good at. Everybody would like to be the person to find life-saving cures but many of those people wouldn’t succeed because they discouraged without tangible results.

Physicians mend or end us, Secundum artem; but although we sneer - In health - when ill we call them to attend us, Without the least propensity to jeer

Lord Byron

Myers Briggs Personality Test

An interesting longitudinal study by the Myers Briggs Research center maps out where different personality types fit best in the various medical careers. To really understand the graph first you have to understand your personality type on the two-letter temperament (ST, SF, NF, & NT). If you don’t know what you are, you can check it out here.

Interesting tidbit

Those who specialize in psychiatry are the most likely to get divorced.