 So our doctors truly happy. And if so, which one of the happiest we're going to talk about that in this episode, let's get into it. All right guys, what is going on? Welcome to another episode in the MD journey and the TMJ show where here we teach people just like you how to succeed on their medical journey with less stress. My name is Lakshman, internal medicine resident, that's making videos, podcast episodes, blog posts, you name it for people just like you for about the last three years. And if you enjoyed this video and you want to support and make sure it gets in the front of more people, then help out by just hitting that like button and subscribing to the podcast if you're listening through audio. But in this episode, I wanted to talk about which physicians are happy. Is our doctors even happy? We'll look actually into the data and maybe that will steer you in a direction if you're not sure what kind of doctor to be. So the first question, are doctors truly happy? Now obviously happiness is a very subjective term and you're happy that may not be my definition of happiness. But when we force people to go ahead and multiple choice things, because that's what we do in the medical community would make you take multiple choice exams in 2019 Medscape released happiness and lifestyle report for physicians. And thankfully they reported that 52% of physicians are either very happy or extremely happy. That means that a majority of physicians and my colleagues are enjoying their job 25% are somewhat happy. And then if we go into people who are not enjoying their job, it goes to about 17, a little less than 20%. So about one to five physicians, according to the survey are not happy, but the good news is about one of every two is so now that we know that doctors like every career is kind of split in the middle for some people extremely enjoying their job, maybe they went to there for a right reason and actually turned out to be the way they wanted, or some people were disappointed maybe they had wrong expectations or just things this didn't work out in their favor. But we're going to focus on the good side today. So let's talk about which physicians according to the survey are the happiest. And if you guys want to play along and go ahead and pause the video here and make sure you hit the like button and then go ahead and comment down below your list of five doctors you think are probably the happiest and then respond to the comment you put down and let me know if you're actually right or not. So if you don't want the spoiler and then go ahead and pause the video, we're just going to drumroll right into number one. And that is the field of rheumatology. Now, if you're unfamiliar with rheumatology, it is a field within the sector of internal medicine. And these are physicians who deal with diseases and both the auto immune conditions where your body is attacking itself, conditions like lupus, scleroderma, vasculitis, really cool and interesting disease processes that can essentially do anything to the body, but also things in the musculoskeletals and things like rheumatoid arthritis as well as osteoarthritis and offering and giving treatments for patients in both of those sectors. Seeing rheumatology at the top of this list of 65% being happy outside of work is not surprising at all. I think I don't think I've actually ever met an unhappy rheumatologist. I'm sure you're out there, but probably don't want to meet you. But if you consider what the field is able to do, they're taking patients that have so many different disease processes going on and probably for years have had symptoms that just not been explained. Maybe they had stomach pain, maybe they have kidney pain, maybe they have eye pain, muscle pain, but no doctor's ever really been able to go ahead and pinpoint all of them together. And suddenly a rheumatologist is able to get in there after a diagnosis is made and give different forms of treatment where a lot of those symptoms may be improved. And rheumatologists can work both in the clinic as well as the hospital setting. There's a lot of flexibility, variability, as well as interesting diseases that these individuals will get to see. And they're also some of the smartest physicians I've ever met because they just know a little bit about everything. So if you're considering using a field where you really want to go ahead and use your physical exam findings to really make a diagnosis and truly make an impact in the lives of your patients, rheumatologists, they're happy. But coming at number two, a 60% happiness we have the field of bottle bearing knowledge. Try to say that five times in a row. Or if you're like me, you can go ahead and just call it immunity. This is obviously a field within surgery that is dealing with everything and the ears, nose, and throat categories. So these are people who made two very simple procedures and I may include fixating a deviated septum like I have when I was a kid, or these can be individuals who take care of very invasive procedures like dealing with things such as throat cancer. Now a surprise of seeing a surgery field show up so quickly on our top five, but it's understandable because ENT is a career path where they have just so much variability of what they see, as well as a good mixture between clinic as well as in the OR. They just seem to have a nicer schedule for the life of the surgeon while still being able to work with their hands and truly make an impact. Now getting into number three, we're gonna go back into the realm of internal medicine. We are now talking at 59%. So not that far off. And to be honest, the rest of the list is getting in the factors about one to two percent. So really there's like a list of top five that's really a list of top 10. But coming to number three is a field of diabetes and endocrinology. This is definitely a field that I consider when I was younger and who knows, maybe I will become one one day. The area of diabetes is obviously very important. More and more individuals are getting diagnosed just because of our Western culture and diet and the lack of movement. And these kinds of patients don't necessarily need to see a specialist and diabetes, but there are going to be patients who are going to be required to take very elaborative regimens and medications to control their sugars, such as pills, as well as things like insulin, where a diabetic endocrinology specialist will come into play. And like any disease process, when diabetes is not well controlled, you can have a lot of complications. And when somebody in diabetes endocrinology or mineral metabolism can go ahead and jump in, fix your sugars through a variety of different treatments, a lot of their elements of their disease process can at least improve if not start to regress. And then if we get into the second element of endocrinology, which again is such a broad field, and there's so much cool things that we can talk about, we can talk about the thyroid, you can talk about the adrenal glands, you can talk about the pituitary, start naming everything in the endocrine system. But there are some really cool disease processes. And also the nice thing that we always have to talk about is there's not that many endocrinology emergencies. There are definitely a few, but the nice thing about being a happy physician is being at home with your family in the evening and not being expected to be called. So if you want to be in a specialty where you're dealing with the disease process as common diabetes, but also something as rare as hypopituitary syndrome, then go ahead and check out diabetes and endocrinology. And then we're going to go ahead and quickly get into number four and number five. Number four, initially, I was quite surprised about this, but it makes more sense. And we're coming at 58%. And that is the field of pediatrics. Now, when I thought about this more, it actually makes sense. You know, kids are obviously cute. It's easier and more motivating to go to work when you understand that your patients may not have done the disease process that they have. And it's easier to want to take care of them. This is compared to an internal medicine doctor who understands that a lot of the illnesses that I treat may have been brought on by the patient's lifestyle choices over a long span of time. And I'm sure there's an extra motivating factor that maybe I haven't had enough time to experience where you take care of a child that's sick and then you'd be able to see them become energetic and just that ball of energy that we know them to be on the day of discharge. And I also obviously see pictures of my pediatric colleagues on Instagram, Facebook, and you name it, just dressing up in really fun scrubs and lanyards. And Halloween is obviously a dress-up day where in internal medicine, we still wear a white coat, a tie, a dress shape. I can definitely understand where that happiness element of pediatrics comes from. Definitely considered going into that field. If you think you'll love working with kids, I had a lot of experience myself before and during that school of doing the same. And it's definitely a field I consider. And at number five, we have a three-way time between general surgery, critical care, and emergency medicine, which honestly all of those are absolutely shocking to be at number five. To begin with surgery, it definitely is a field where you get to work with your hands and the individuals I love doing that live surgery. And it's also cool to just see a problem, go ahead and go in and fix it and then get out, literally. But at the same time, surgeons have very busy schedules and usually they are also at the higher list of being burnt out. But in this early, at least, majority of the surgeons that did answer seem to be happy. Getting into number two, also a similar field of critical care. These are individuals that are working in the ICU and the field of internal medicine. They also get to work with their hands and think of very elaborate diagnoses as well as something very simple. If somebody has pneumonia, but they're not able to breathe, then they can take care of things like intubation as well as managing you on a ventilator. And there's a little bit of an heart that does come to making sure somebody can breathe with an external machine. So it's a really cool field because there's really only a few subsets of conditions or complaint symptoms that a patient can have that makes them go into the ICU. And you can use everything in your tool belt to help them get fixed. Either discharge or transferred to kind of a lower level care somewhere in the hospital. But similar to down to surgery, these individuals will come very early in the morning and leave very late at night and sometimes they may even stay in the hospital. But depending on the institution you're staying in, you may work on kind of a shift schedule or kind of a two week basis where you may be the critical care ICU doctor for a week and maybe you get a week off. And so that kind of schedule where it's considered shift work can definitely be where the element of happiness comes in. Finally, emergency medicine, which is a field I considered when I was a med student. It's very, very cool to think about having a patient walk in and then be able to consider every single diagnosis that comes up and then considering what labs you want to do. This patient is basically a blank slate. They may have a past medical history, but blank slate compared to me as an internal medicine physician. I may start to see initial vitals. I may see initial labs and I can start predicting what diagnosis a patient may have. So emergency medicine is really cool because you can deal with patients with a variety of conditions. A patient who may go into the surgeon, who may go into internal medicine, or a patient who you can quickly fix in the emergency room and send home and have them follow up with one of their primary care doctors. Another beauty of emergency medicine is that, again, the shift works. So you know what time you're coming, what time you're going home, and you're not going to go ahead and get called after your shift for something regarding the patient. There's obviously reasons that emergency medicine may also have a high tendency for burnout. And that includes, you know, dealing with specialists who may not want to take a patient and then having to go back and forth, dealing with more of the common flyers and the frequent flyers in the emergency room who may not require admission, but they at least have to evaluate and take care of them in the ED, as well as not always being able to understand kind of if they made the right call. I know ED doctors have told me in the past where they think somebody has a diagnosis, but they may not be able to know if their diagnosis was true once they get moved to whatever team or service they got transferred to. So there's a little bit of incompleteness that some of them may feel, but at the same time, you get to see somebody as they come in the room, may fix them immediately, and then triage them to a different specialist. And you get to do this throughout the day. If you are somebody who runs on adrenaline, this may be the field for you. Those guys are the top five and technically seven specialties in terms of happiness. Now, I'm glad according to this survey that a majority of physicians are happy, but it was obviously a one-time survey. It's obviously going to be biased depending on who took it. And we're also expecting a new one to come out in 2020, so we can see what the update one shows. Let me know in the comment section down below what other specialties you may want me to consider, other video ideas, and topics you may want me to talk about. But thank you guys so much for watching this video. If you guys have any more questions or if you want to learn about more specialties, then go ahead and check out our How to Become series on our website. We're basically writing a blog post for every single specialty you can think of and talking about what they do, how to become one, the amount of training, as well as things like salaries, and giving a shout out to some of the best ones on Instagram and both so you guys can read to learn more. So all of that information is going to be down below. I'm going to stop that and thank you guys so much for watching. Hit that like, subscribe button before we go. Thanks for being a part of my journey. See you guys on the next one. Peace.