 So why did I pick internal medicine? So it's been a month since I matched into my internal medicine program guys and I wanted to make this video to include the top six things that I really loved about the field of internal medicine for anyone considering to potentially pursue the field as well. Hopefully helps you make your decision if you're kind of on the edge, but we're going to get to those tips after this intro. All right guys, what is going on? Luxury of an MD journey helping you succeed on your medical journey with less stress. If you're new to this channel, first of all, welcome. This whole channel is for individuals like you, medical students and pre-meds who want to learn how to strive on their medical journey, not just survive. So if that message is attractive to you and if you enjoy this video, definitely consider hitting that subscribe button down below and joining the community. But definitely give this video a like if you enjoy it. So let's get into the core of this video, which is why I picked internal medicine. And this is coming from a student that looked at almost every field as a possibility. Maybe not surgery, but everything else. I considered family, I considered radiology, interventional, I considered radiation, oncology, emergency medicine, like you name it, but ultimately I decided on internal medicine for these six reasons that I'm about to share with you. And hopefully for anyone that's also trying to make a similar decision, this will help you. So let's get into it. So the number one reason I picked internal medicine is that it really reflected my why and my why is what I like to call a web influence. So when I was younger, most of my family members had some kind of ailment, either chronic or acute, and I really got to see the medical experience from the perspective of a patient. And what I realized was so amazing about medicine and internal medicine was that you could not only impact the lives of a patient, but as soon as that patient goes home, they can play whatever role they have in the lives of their loved ones. You know, a mother can go back and be a wife, you know, a mother to the children can go back and work, be involved in her church as a community member, you know, a lot of different things. You know, being in internal medicine, you often deal with the family. So you may be dealing with a very important member such as a spouse, a parent, you know, a grandparent, you name it. But if you can help that person in the room, you tend to also help the person that is caring for them and also the people you never get to meet. So that was like the one thing that definitely attracted me internal medicine that I got the most opportunities during medical school to really experience this ability to help one individual who could then have their presence help so many more. So that web of influence really attracted me high in. So the second thing that really attracted me towards internal medicine is the idea of being able to practice preventative medicine. Now a lot of the healthcare choices that we have right now and the health burdens that we have and diseases we have are due to some of the lifestyle choices and behavioral choices that we make today. And so to help your patients understand why to eat healthy, but also what's going on in their bodies that they choose to eat unhealthy to teach a diabetic, you know, you have diabetes, but if you don't properly manage it, these are the scary complications you can have and here's why. And if you can help your patients connect these dots and actually follow through with it, you're essentially saving their life because if they hadn't got the advice from you or another physician, then they probably were on the path to some dangerous diseases such as heart disease or cancer. So we're saving lives before they're ever at risk, which is an awesome thing. A lot of other specialties can say this. I definitely want to kind of throw that in there. But the kind of the preventative medicine that I want to deal with happened to be an internal medicine. The third thing I really loved about internal medicine is the idea of the complexity. You know, a lot of the patients will have diseases, chronic diseases that kind of battle each other. You know, you may want to treat somebody's liver disease, but you can't because they also have kidney disease and you can't treat them with the same medication. A lot of those conflicts happen. And so it really just kind of add a little bit of a wrinkle. It puts you on your heels and for doing a career that you're going to be doing for 30, 40, 50 years, you want it to be interesting to come to work. You don't want to have a desk job, you know, and do the same thing over and over again. So medicine, especially internal medicine, it's going to have a lot of complexity just because of the patient population. We'll see, we'll see the diabetics with the heart disease, with the liver disease, and they continue to smoke. So they also have COPD. There's a lot that goes in there. And so that complexity, while it's frustrating at times, and it's obviously frustrating for the patient, is an attractive part of the field because you get to care for a lot. And once you help these patients, they feel a lot better. And the last three things are really things that are more for your future, your future goals, but are important to consider. So number four is that internal medicine just has a lot of doors for opportunities and just options in general. So I'm about to go to my residency, but even after my residency, I can choose to go to a lot of different ways. I can finish my residency and become a hospitalist, become an internist, work in an outpatient setting, or I can do more training and I can choose to become a cardiologist, oncologist, you know, pulmonologist, ICU doc, you name it. There's so many options. And even after that, you can become a cardiologist and then focus on a heart failure or you become a cardiologist and focus on electrophysiology. Like those doors of opportunity based off of your interests, what kind of patients you want to see, what kind of lifestyle you want, that is there. And that flexibility is definitely more so in internal medicine than any other field. And so that definitely attracts me. And that moves on to the fifth thing that attracted me internal medicine, which is that even with all these doors of opportunity, your training is still relatively short. Think about somebody going into a neurosurgery who will spend anywhere from seven, eight-ish years in residency alone, where somebody in internal medicine can go into a three-year program and then choose to do a three-year fellowship and still be done before their new resident colleague. Obviously, I want my brain surgeon to be really well-trained so, you know, respect to those who do it. But it doesn't have a very friendly kind of training timeline. Six years may seem like a lot to many of you guys but trust me once you get through this process even to where I am now, it seems like nothing. So the idea that I can go a lot of different routes and it's either I'm done in three years, I've done six years or eight years and, you know, you can paint the career and the future you want. That's definitely attractive. And finally, guys, number six that really attracted me internal medicine, again, is very future-based. It's just the flexibility. I can choose to shift careers. I can work in a hospital setting, go into an outpatient setting, go back into academics. And you definitely just have this flexibility. Again, you have this for other specialties too but because there's so many jobs in internal medicine, because you're always going to need a doctor that can take care of an adult in a hospital setting or a clinic setting, there's always going to be jobs available for internal medicine doctors. And so having that flexibility in terms of location, I don't have to tell my significant other, sorry, we can't go live in here because I can't find a job. More and more likely, I will be able to find a job in a location we want with the salary that's ideal and I can live to our lifestyles. And so all of that, you know, just that flexibility, being able to still work with patients that I love and the career that I love and the location I love, that's perfect. You want to be in a field that's happy, that you don't have to like to strain yourself out of bed to go to work. You want to be able to hop out and enjoy your work each and every day. And for me, those six reasons that I mentioned guys, internal medicine is a field for me and may not be the field for you, but just understand that there's plenty of options here. Whether you want to be a hands-on doctor, want to do a lot of procedures, internal medicine has that, want to be hands-off, don't do a lot of procedures, you know, internal medicine has that for you too. So there's a lot of flexibility, patients are amazing, there's a lot of lifelong learning that you'll be able to do. If you guys have more questions about why I picked internal medicine and maybe help you decide if the field is for you, just let me know. Go and either comment down below or email me at thembtjerry.com at tmail.com. I'll be happy to take your questions and answer them. If you guys have more suggestions for videos in the future, just let me know. Again, comment down below. And if you haven't done so by now, hit that like button and then subscribe and join the community, our ever-so-growing community. And thank you guys so much if you have already. I will stop at them like I always do in this video, but I will see you guys in the next video. Take care, my friends.