March 19, 2008

• Free at last!

  After a grueling (though not always onerous) 6 weeks, i am finally done with Ob/gyn and can safely say it is not for me. It had its moments but a large part of my enjoyment from them derived from the fact that it was indeed moments, finite spaces of time with an end in sight. I do not have what it takes to deal with that particular population, especially in an urban, uneducated, socially disadvantaged population. Now before you all go off on me, yes i know i will be dealing with that same population in internal med or optho (well, maybe not optho) but i have little to no problem dealing with crack addicts with heart failure, compared to women having their 6th child by age 17 because they simply refuse to use contraception.

  However, in an attempt to show the other side of the coin, here is a brief excerpt from Dr Julie, who enjoyed ob enough to be considering it as a field

  “OB-gyn… liability city. There are a lot more opportunities for public
  health, health policy, etc. It’s a lot more conceivable for an OB-Gyn
  to be Surgeon General than a neonatologist. There are a lot of
  different options available for practices. There are hospital
  deliverists, options to sub-specialize in Maternal Fetal Medicine (High
  risk OB), Gyne-Oncology (lots o’surgery), and Infertility Endocrinology
  (not-so-much a Catholic girl option).
  
  One of my favorite things
  about OB-Gyn is the opportunity to educate. Sure, in neonatology I can
  teach fellows, residents, and medical students. But with OB-Gyn, every
  patient encounter is a chance to teach. My ideal, dream practice:
  inner-city, high risk population age 12-25. Crisis pregnancy management
  (i.e. non-termination) with specialized social workers, and patient
  education aimed at productive decision making (integrating my two rules
  #1 respect yourself and everyone else #2 don’t be stupid).
  Realistically, that kind of practice wouldn’t be able to sustain
  itself, because my target patient population is not one typically
  associated with Blue Cross Blue Shield.”

  for those of you interested in the remainder of the post, it can be found here. She also brings up the point that we all have a pretty scary important decision to make soon: what to do with the rest of our lives. Exactly one year from tomorrow, I will match (hopefully) and have a job. A few weeks after that, i will be an honest to goodness doctor…but what kind? Well the breakdown at the moment is about 80% internal medicine, 20% ophthalmology.

  Here is my dilemma…I love the lifestyle associated with ophtho-great pay, good hours, opportunities for surgery without the gen surg lifestyle, few to no traumas, all in all a high level of job satisfaction for someone with outside interests. Plus I worked as a lasik tech in an ophtho office for two years, so i have a background in it. But i dont know if i like the eye enough to want to spend my entire career dealing only with one part of the body

  On the other side is internal med. A huge range of specialties available, the opportunity to see just about anything, a much better chance for me to match back to california if i decide to, but a much lower pay rate unless i go for a fellowship and a long time spent in hospitals before i have an opportunity to join a private practice.

  So for the moment, i am waiting until i do an ophtho elective before removing myself from the early match.

  Not really a decision anyone can help me with, but hey if you are coming here, you have at least a passing interest in what goes on in my mind, so there you go

  • 7:27 pm
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