 What kind of doctors should I be? All right guys, what is going on? Luxury from the MD journey helping you succeed on your medical journey with less stress. This video, we're going to talk about that question that everybody asks all the time, which is, I want to become a physician. I'm in med school, but I have no idea what kind of physician I want to be. How do I decide? What do I do? What tips do you have? So I'm going to give you my tips. A few of them are going to be things to help you decide and kind of figure out what is best for you. A few things are going to be tips on how to get more exposure as well as things to consider, especially if you're deciding between a lot of different things. So try not to keep this video long, but I have a lot of tips for you guys. Tip number one, which is, it is okay to not know very early. Actually, it's okay not to even know pretty far down the line. I have, I'm applying to residency right now, I'm making this video and I have friends that literally switched their minds within a month or two months before residency applications are about to be submitted. So it tells you that you can consider taking more information in and make your decision accordingly. This is your life career. So it is okay to say, I don't need to make a commitment from the very start. There are a few specialties that I'll talk about that are competitive. And so they require a little bit of grunt work that you do from an early point. So research, getting exposure with faculty, and I'll tell you kind of how to approach that. But just remember the idea that if you're deciding between many things or a lot of things on your rotations or classes seem interesting, that's okay. You're, you're, you're going to be like me too, where I'm like, well, this seems cool and that seems cool. And I'm considering this and then you'll do another rotation by, okay, I'm considering that. And it all comes back to you and you give yourself time to think. So wrap up this tip. It's okay to not decide early. What I will say is to continue to reflect on how you look at each specialty, because, and this goes to tip two, which is you will realize it because you will find your people. And when I got this tip, as a first, you know, first to second year med student, I really don't know what that meant. They've always talked about finding your people. But you know, who are my people? I don't even know, you know, myself well enough. Instead, I'm now supposed to be evaluating other people and seeing if I'll get along with them. But it is true. You will find personalities that will rub you the wrong way. And you'll find people that think about medicine, that think about patient care much differently than you will. And maybe those won't be the specialties for you because their pace may be much different. You may enjoy a fast pace and you're on a rotation when it's very slow. And you'll realize, okay, this is not for me. And the people here enjoy the slow pace and I'm not one of them. Or you may be on something where the treatment is not definite or the treatment is definite. And that's important to you. And you're going to realize that and you're going to gravitate towards people who enjoy having a solution and fixing it in a very specific way, or people that are willing to tinker with things, especially when they realize that it is not a perfect solution. So for example, a specialty like physical medicine and rehab often deals with patients who are quite injured from things like strokes and things like multiple sclerosis, bad traumas. And so a PM&R's job is to help them recover. But if you ask the doc, they aren't always focused on bringing them back to 100%. Sometimes it's just meeting the goals of the patient. What does the patient want to do? Maybe the patient just wants to be able to use a restroom without having a family member help them. And so helping the patient with that goal. But as a student, you may not be interested in working in a field where you're not able to help the patient 100% of the time or get them back to full health. That's something that you have to deal with, understand what patient population you work with. But you'll find that even within these little categories, other people just like you with preferences, just like you will also gravitate towards the field. And so you will find yourself in a specialty with your people, people that like treatment plans, just like you, people that like patient populations like you. And so you'll find your people to look for people that you get along with when you're on your rotation, seeing if you get along with your residents and attendings, or if they seem like they're totally different personalities than you. So keep an eye out for that. So tip number three is understand that if you're considering a competitive specialty, and this was me when I was applying or considering between a competitive specialty and a not so competitive specialty, is act like you're going to go into the competitive specialty. So what are competitive specialties? So that includes a lot of your surgery rotations or surgery specialties. So things like orthopedics, things like plastic surgeries, a big one, radiation oncology, dermatology, obviously is a really big one. And so those are specialties that people enjoy because they have very limited spots, they are very high paying. And so and some of them do have a very beneficial lifestyle component to them. And for various reasons that a lot of people applied to them, obviously. And so they are competitive. But they also things like plastic surgery, things like radiation oncology, do require you to kind of have a foot in the door early on so that way you can get exposure. So that way you can be a competitive applicant, you know, you don't want to apply plastic surgery and not have any plastic surgery experience. That's one of the fields where they expect you to have research in the field. And so you don't apply to residency without any research and plastic surgery or dermatology, things of those sort. So my tip, and this is something I learned when I was a first year medical students, if you're considering between a competitive specialty, or if you're considering a competitive specialty, make sure that you just act like you're applying to it. And so set yourself up nicely, contact the faculty, get some research experience, get some shadowing experience. And even if you decide against it, your application is going to look very impressive. I'm going to give you my own experience. I considered going into oncology, and this still is something that I have as a potential future goal. So I looked into the field of radiation oncology. And for various reasons, I chose to not do the field mainly for geographic flexibility and knowing where my family and my significant others wanted to end up in the next few years. But, and I found a field that I'm perfectly happy with internal medicine I'm thrilled to go into. But I applied as if I kind of approached my application originally during my first few years, as if I was going into radonk. And so I did a lot of research and oncology that can definitely carry over and help me in the future if I choose to do chemok. But I have a lot of research and experience, I have a lot of publications. And you get an application that looks a little bit more filled with experiences that are that can, you know, positively looked, can be looked upon very positively, because you're, you're going towards the competitiveness, even if you choose not to do it, those applications or those extracurriculars and those experiences still stand. And so those are definitely things you can continue to talk about. Versus if you flip it around, you know, if I chose to apply to internal medicine, maybe my desire or urgency of doing research and getting faculty exposure may not have been as high, because it may not have been a specialty that considered research as high as a field like radiation oncology. So because I set myself up for a competitive specialty, and I may change my mind to, because I found something else that I loved, I still have those experiences. So if you're deciding between, you know, anything and you have a competitive specialty and your potential, just pursue it and you can always change your mind. So that really helps your application will look a lot more impressive too. So a few things to consider in terms of what fields you want to choose is one, consider how long it takes to become that physician. So especially if you're an older applicant, this is pretty important. If you want to become a neurosurgeon, but you also want to become maybe a family medicine doc, those are pretty different. And so you'll have some unique reasons why you want to do one versus the other. One takes seven years and one takes three. So understanding that there's a lot of time to go into something and residency and fellowship. And those can add times before you officially become attending and are able to do that independently. So timing is one competitiveness. We also talked about so understand what grades you need, what step one grade you need, what GPA things of that sort. And then go into other things about competitiveness to geographic. If you really want to end up in Boston, there are plenty of great schools in Boston. There are a few that really take a bunch of applicants, or if you want to end up in New York or California, those are very, you know, highly desirable locations. So even if your specialty isn't the most competitive, those areas are. And especially if you want to go in those areas and the competitive specialty, you're just fighting against a bigger hurdle. That's not to say that you're not going to get it, but just understand that from the start that just motivates you to work harder. So you're able to have a better result in case that's where you decide. You don't have to know where you want to go to residency now, but just understand that if you wanted to be on the West Coast and you wanted to be in California, if you want to be in New York or Boston, things of those cities that are pretty popular for people to end up in that you set yourself up to work hard now in case you choose to go in those decisions. And then finally, something that, you know, I don't want to brush over because it is something that more and more people consider is considered the lifestyle of the specialty. Now, I don't like to mention the monetary conversations of a job because I don't feel like you should ever consider a specialty just for the money that it makes. And so that is part of the lifestyle. But the other things that are more important in lifestyle are how much time do you want to be in the hospital? How much time do you want to be at clinic? Do you want to have some free time with your family? So how much, you know, look at the people that you shadow the rotations you're on, see how much they are spending time with you versus their family. And that's going to be a good exposure. If you're unsure, make sure you ask them like, what is your day look like? What is your month look like? How much are you able to see your loved ones? How much are you able to do other hobbies outside of medicine? If that is important to you, if you love the OR, and you really don't care about other stuff out, that's totally fine. If you love, there's people that are huge fans of ICU and they're really big interventionist and they love being in the hospital. And so that's really important to them. So that the lifestyle aspect isn't that important to them. And that's, there's nothing wrong with that. There are people that are family, you know, your, their parents are already going into medical school or they're about to start a family. And that is something you, you should consider. So look at the lifestyle of things and ask the people in the field how happy they are in the specialty of their choice and saying, if you are okay with the sacrifices that they're making, because everybody makes a sacrifice regardless of what specialty you're in. So consider lifestyle, not for the monetary, but just for your ability to live the life that you think you want to and ask the people that are currently living it right now. So the last two things that I'll give you in this video are basically how to understand a little bit more of what specialty you want to do. So the first thing in this tip is given also all the time. So the first thing in this tip is given all the time is make sure you're shadowing in medical school, especially as a pre-med in medical school, and recommend trying to do at least one shadowing experience a month. If you're interested in going into emergency medicine, but you're also interested in maybe doing trauma surgery. Those are kind of similar, but you know, there are distinctions. Make sure at least once a month you're going into the EDD, following people around, make sure another month you're getting some exposure with a trauma surgeon. And then every month, try to find an experience that can be within the fields you're interested in. Or if you hear about a feeling you know nothing about, if you've never heard about PMR, it's a fantastic field and people often don't hear about it early enough. Radiation oncology is another example too. You can at least sign up for an experience, reach out to a faculty, ask them and try to book something once a month on a day that you're, you know that you're going to be free. That's my goal, especially during your first and two years. When you think you're busy, you are busy, but you have time to dedicate maybe, you know, three to four hours on a day that's not too hectic, because you're going to be able to make a decision much easier and kind of head in a direction towards research to other shadowing experiences because you found a cool mentor that you shadowed. So try to get once a month is my tip. It's not just do shadowing. That's what I'll tell you is do at least once a month. And then the second thing you can do is do the careers in medicine quiz. So I'll link it down below, but there's great quiz has like 120 questions, I believe, but I asked you about different things that you should or you have to consider when you're applying to medicine. Do you like working with your hands? Do you like working with long-term chronic diseases? Do you like just fixing things or do you, are you okay with kind of being creative on a treatment plan and working over time? Those require different types of specialties. They require different personalities. There are certain answers where I said absolutely not. I'm not interested enough. There are certain answers like, yep, that's, that's me. So take the quiz. I'll put it down below. I do think you may need a membership to the site, but in case you don't, then, you know, I'll put the link down below and you may be able to get one through your school, but it's a fantastic quiz. If the quiz that I linked down below doesn't work, you know, just Google, what kind of doctor should I be quiz and you'll find something which will ask you different personality questions and points you in a direction based off of what things you are interested in. So hopefully this video was helpful and I gave you a little bit of insight on how to consider things, how to approach getting a motor exposure, as well as how to make decisions when you have multiple options that you may be considering. And then I'll kind of wrap it up that if you are a pre-med and you want more insight on deciding what kind of position to be in a medical school and the first place is right for you, then I'll link down below to my pre-med course called the pre-med blueprint, which is my attempt to help all the pre-meds on not only how to study, how to manage your time, but also how to set yourself up for a grade application. That way when the medical school application comes across, you're not stressed. You know you're going to get in somewhere, you're going to feel confident that your extracurriculars, your grades, and whatnot are set up nicely. So if you want to check out the course, plenty of great reviews at the course, I'll link that down below too. But if you enjoyed this video, give it a like, subscribe to the channel, obviously comment down below with anything you've learned or questions you have. As I always remind my subscribers, if you are subscribed and you comment down below with something or the hashtag than the journey, I'm always picking a random winner for my paid resources, which include my books and my course. So I give that to one lucky winner every month. So if you comment down below, I will pick a random winner at the end of I guess this is September. So but thank you guys so much for watching. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this video, but I will see you guys in the next one. Take care.