Satisfying Specialization
Going to med school will mold a hapless student into a doctor, but becoming a specialist will require further work and toil. Being a specialist in the right field, however, can be quite lucrative for the doctor, and it can also be more rewarding from a perspective of doing something you particularly enjoy. Furthermore, being a specialist can actually help more people in some ways, if you’re providing a specialty that would otherwise be absent from your area, or if you’re becoming a specialist in a particular subject for which there is a particularly large amount of demand. With the baby boomer generation growing older, the demand for specialties like cardiology, urology, gastroenterology, and orthopedics is going to increase dramatically. Thinking about what specialty you would like to pursue while still in med school may seem a bit early, but it’s worth considering, as your choice of specialty can make quite a difference to the nature of your medical career.
Other specialties might be important for areas of the country without many doctors, or with many individuals who need the services of that specialty. OB/GYNs, for instance, are likely to be very desired in low-income areas. Filling such a position after the grueling work of med school can easily make you feel like it was all worth it, however, as you aid so many people in so many ways.
Sometimes, the decision is of what to specialize in is going to be a matter of money versus a desire to help people. A cardiologist, for instance, is much more likely to help more people, saving lives, while a plastic surgeon or dermatologist is much more likely to make money. This isn’t to say that a plastic surgeon or a dermatologist never does satisfying, helpful work; but in general, a cardiologist will have a much more pivotal role in directly helping people than the other two specialists might. This is something to think about in med school, as you move towards gaining your specialty, not least because you’re likely to come out with so much debt. It may be a matter of some necessity that you move towards a specialty that will allow you to pay your med school bills. But, there are still ample specialties that will pay plenty while still offering rewarding work. As previously mentioned, the increasing age of the boomer generation will very much heighten demand for certain specialties, such that you will be able to help people, and likely can make plenty of money doing it, as well.
In the end, though, despite any monetary issues linked to choosing your specialty, it seems that perhaps the most important factor should be your own happiness. A recent study called “Specialty Selection and Relative Job Satisfaction of Family Physicians and Medical Specialists in Austria,“ by Wolfgang Spiegel et al., showed that specialists who worked in their desired specialty had significantly higher job satisfaction than those who did not. Interestingly, this was not true of family physicians. But as far as specialists go, the bottom line is that you should be considering a specialty that will make you happy, a specialty that you think you would enjoy. After all, if you are not doing something you love, then all that hard work during med school means far less.