 If you have no idea what type of doctor or medical path you should be pursuing, I'm going to show you exactly how to decide in two minutes. Let's get into it. Hey friends, welcome back to channel. In case you're new here, my name is Lakshman. I'm a board certified internal medicine physician and currently a cardiology fellow. And here at the MD journey, we make content to help your medical journey a little bit easier, more successful, both a lot less stressful. One of the most stressful parts of the medical journey, at least for me, was just freaking deciding what kind of doctor do I want to be. But today I'm going to show you how in just two minutes, you can make a more confident decision on the path you should take. So let's go ahead and put that time on the clock. So the first thing that you need to do is take all the career paths you're considering. Maybe you're considering being a doctor, a nurse, a PA, etc. That is completely fine. If you're already on the path of being a physician, for example, then take all the specialties you're considering. Maybe you're considering orthopedic surgery, family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, cardiology, like myself, and then go ahead and put those on the list. The second step is to now ask yourself what are the bread and butter situations that this personnel will find themselves in. So for example, if you're a nurse, you're going to be working a lot with patients bedside and dealing with those comments, complaints that they may have your physician, they start to ask yourself, well, as a pediatrician, what are the provider and butter things as an internal medicine doctor, things that I commonly saw included things like infections, lung disease, asthma, COPD, renal failure, chest pain, people that were just in chronic pain, people had GI bleeding, cirrhosis, drug intoxications. That was a common list of things that I would see on a daily basis on the flip side. As a cardiologist, my bread and butter would be things like chest pain, arrhythmias, heart failures and valvular disease. Kind of those four pillars are things that I'm used to seeing on a daily basis. And once you go through all those pathways, all the specialties and you've identified your bread and butter, now start identifying those zebras. As a cardiologist, you may be thinking about dealing with more exotic things like cardiac tamponade or people that are needing transplants or cardiogenic shock. As an internal medicine doctor, maybe some of those exotic diagnosis of rheumatologic diseases or infectious diseases or cancer diagnosis really gets your juices flowing, those are your zebras. But once you have a list of your bread and butter and your zebras, really ask yourself, which of these bread and butters could I see myself doing every single day for the rest of my life? Because in reality, that bread and butter is going to be your day to day practice, your day to day exposure, whether you're a nurse, a physician or cardiologist, whatever specialty you ultimately pick. Those zebras are likely going to be making your months and the years in your career more exciting. But that's that bread and butter that you're going to be exposed to on a daily basis. You have to ask yourself, can't live with a career where this is what I'm seeing on a day to day basis. And on a personal note, when I was an internal medicine doctor, the answer for me was no, I can't deal with that bread and butter. Because cardiologists, all of those four pillars I set, I absolutely see myself doing it, thus I know it's the path for me. So try this bread and butter and zebra exercise for yourself. Next time, we'll try to hit that two minute mark a little bit better, but hopefully this help helps you becoming the physician or medical professional that you want with less stress. And again, if you're on your medical journey and you want all the tips and tricks that I wish somebody had given to me on my first day of medical school, make sure you check out our free Med School Success Handbook. And if you're on your medical journey and you want the entire blueprint of what to do to get into medical school, to crush it in med school, on your rotations, your board exams, your studying, getting into residency, and ultimately into fellowship, if that's your choice, then go ahead and check down below our Med School Blueprint, which is all of our programs in one place that have been checked out by hundreds of students over the past few years. I'll let the results speak for themselves. If you're interested, they'll be linked down below in the description. And if you enjoyed this episode, then you'll probably enjoy this episode of all the study strategies that I use to get a 3.9 tp at medical school, as well as this technique right here that has been checked out by millions of people on YouTube on exactly how I use flashcards to reduce my setting time in half. Hopefully you guys enjoyed those. And as always, thank you so much for being a part of my journey. Hopefully we were a little help to you guys on yours. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.