Damn expired link... After spending a month in the radiology department, it's is definitely in my top-five.What bothers me is that you have almost no patient-contact and (more so) that you do almost nothing curative (well, there's interventional radiology, but you'll end up doing almost exclusively interventional or diagnostic). But apart from that it was a great experience. Immunology is the other thing that interests me the most currently, especially since it is developing rapidly right now and making great strides with certain diseases (also, for an internal medicine specialty it has relatively young patients). Apart from that I can only tell you what I don't want to do, OB/GYN, surgery and dermatology (not because I don't respect them, I just don't want to do them). I once considered psychiatry, but I was quite let down by my experience with it, sadly. But I have still some time left and there are fields I haven't even dipped into (neurology, anesthesia, etc.), so I'll see what the future brings. I'm afraid this is a universal problem with medical education. The more research advances, the more is added to the curriculum, but almost never is something thrown out and the time you have available stays the same. It's a difficult situation and I don't see any easy solution for it (make medical education even longer? Specialize during medschool and you'll end up with MDs that can't think outside the box, etc...) What specialty did your wife chose (and how?)I think that in the states practical experience comes too late in the process.
My wife was doing a radiology residency at a prestigious program here in the US and after a year withdrew from the program. She loved the program, the people in it and the quality of the learning but she really, really missed patient interaction. My advice here (again unsolicited) is that if patient interaction is at all important to you, don't go this route. She tried to console herself with the thought of interventional too, but it wasn't enough. She is now applying to Derm residencies and just finished her last interview last week. Imagine going through that process TWICE?! It's been pretty crazy. But to answer your question, we made a list of the specialties that interested her. We knew we wanted a family so things like Surgery etc were out, although she seems to have an aptitude for surgery. Then we made a pros/cons list for each specialty. In the end Radiology won because we thought the science/technology aspects of it would be intellectually stimulating enough to make up for the lack of patient care. We were wrong. We chose Derm because my wife loves the pathology involved. She likes being able to diagnose complex internal problems from the clues left on the skin (I'm not a doctor, I'm sure there's a more elegant way of putting this). She is doing a research fellowship at Duke right now and the work she's doing is very interesting. As she puts it, by the time the patient has arrived there they've seen a number of physicians that can't diagnose. She enjoys it quite a bit. It was a good change and I'm glad we made it now rather than 10 years from now. Anyways, good luck! Immunology sounds like a really fascinating field.After spending a month in the radiology department, it's is definitely in my top-five.What bothers me is that you have almost no patient-contact and (more so) that you do almost nothing curative (well, there's interventional radiology, but you'll end up doing almost exclusively interventional or diagnostic). But apart from that it was a great experience.
This is funny.