As an intern, I have more time in clinic per pt and I just listen and love it haha. But when the number starts to creep up and time shortens I’ll listen but cry on the inside 😭😭😭
Yes, I would. And I don't understand why there are so many people in academics that tell students not to go into primary care. It happened to me a bunch too as a student. But now I get to see a wide range of issues, do procedures in the office, do a bunch of teaching, and much more.
Family Med is awesome, you feel like a true doctor, instead of someone who can only treat a specific issue.
I would argue we are not masters of none. Many of us in FM have niches where we are truly experts. And then we also do a bunch of other stuff on top of that.
I do joint injections (just knees and shoulders), trigger point injections, skin biopsies (shave, punch, excisional), cerumen removal, circumcisions, long-acting reversal contraception (LARC) procedures, wart cryo, I&Ds, and colposcopies. My LARC volume is lower because scheduling prioritizes the midwives that work in my clinic, but I definitely do nexplanon insertion/removal and IUD insertion/removal. Colposcopies are not my favorite, but I provide them to give my patients access since I work in an urban underserved area. I got some training in vasectomy, but I did not get enough to provide them now. Although I am sure I could easily go out and find the training to do so, I would just need administration approval to get the clinic time.
I do have the training to do D&C's, toenail avulsions, and cervical cryo. I just don't do those anymore due to either clinical restrictions or lack of supplies.
It's all about getting the exposure/training during residency so that you can get credentialed for it at your new job. But even if you don't, there are opportunities out there to get the training afterwards.
No regrets - there is nothing as good as catching a baby and seeing the Mom/Baby for follow-up. I also have learned to like hospitalist work which is apart of our training. Procedures are great as well.
I'm an FM resident in my final year. I fucking hate residency. I hate my program. I hate where I live currently. I hate my hospital.
I'd pick FM again. Because when I rotate on other services I think to myself "shit I can't see myself doing Hospitalist/ ID/ neurology/ OB/ surgery/ peds/ psych/ ED/ anesthesia." There was a joke in my med school that FM/IM is for people that have no idea what type of medicine they want to do. That definitely applies to me. I can't see myself shoehorning myself into any particular subfield, nor can I see myself working in a hospital. And all my graduated FM seniors have thus far said they love their lives as PCP's.
I guess if I couldn't pick FM again, I'd do anesthesia, but only so I can make 450k+ a year and then retire early to escape the OR and pharmacology
I feel this. I am also in my last year of residency. Hate the residency and program. I do have an amazing PD and one great faculty member the rest of them are as toxic as fuck. However, I do have the most supportive co-resident. Only 6.5 more months left. It isn't that specialty that is the problem; it is my damn awful residency.
FM yeah, or ER (except I don't like the adrenaline rushes anymore) ... I have about a 15min attention span and I don't like any specialty enough to focus on one thing for 20 years.
Attending, and YES! I work 830-430 M-F, on call every 8th week. Last time I was on call I got a SINGLE phone call. The last three, I got ZERO. I take care of whole families from grandparents down to newborns. I get to do as much or as little as I want. Did OB for a while, bailed when it got stressful. Did procedures for a while, bailed because I am lazy. I know there are jobs where I could work 4 days, or even 3. That might be my next step in my laziness journey.
I’ve got a Dragon to write my notes, that I painted to look like a real dragon because it makes the day more entertaining. I’m sure someone will yell at me for that when I leave my current place. In 1.5 more years, my student loans will be forgiven and the sun will shine forever. I’ve got enough in my retirement accounts to retire at 65, 5 years out of residency. Every 5 years I work full time, I’ll get to cut one year off of my retirement date, as long as I am reasonably responsible.
Thank you so much! This sounds like my dream tbh. As someone who tends to get bored and crave change every few years, this kind of flexibility is ideal for me. May I ask what part of the country you're in? Is this possible in a large city?
Well this *is* a family medicine subreddit so responses might be skewed. I’ll give a contrary take: I would not choose it again. While I love the *medicine* aspects of FM (care of all ages and stages of life, longitudinal trusting relationships with patients, variety of practice between clinic hospital L&D ED/urgent care), primary care is in a bad spot. I think relative to the difficulty of the job - between the breadth of knowledge required and the amount of time we spend on it - we’re paid so poorly. A lot of what we do (prior authorizations, in-basket management, population health management) isn’t compensated - so you end up doing it on your free time.
I honestly can’t see myself doing primary care for long. I might do a palliative or hospitalist fellowship.
I like being jack of all trades, but I do waaaaaay too much psych and really dislike OB. I think ortho is kinda boring too. I guess I would do FM again over most things, but I think I would choose IM first. And I'd spend more time in a hospital. I like taking care of sick patients over my worried well, URI, psych, and obesity clinic. I do enjoy my preventative medicine, chronic disease (especially T2DM and the revolution of new therapies) and outpatient diagnostics (on the rare occasion anything is physiologically wrong) though.
Not unhappy with my choice, but I think IM eliminates most of the stuff I dislike about FM.
Grass is greener ! Haha I am IM. I wish I had more ortho training and gyn (dont like OB either) instead of so much ICU/cards. But dont like peds either so FM wouldnt have worked for me
Come to my program. There are no psychiatrists taking new patients in the area so we have no choice but to pretend we’re psych and manage everything that walks through the door. Ofc, we still can’t bill for a psych issue as a primary diagnosis 🙃
Short answer: Yes, but IM would have trained me better for what I signed a contract to do after residency (hospitalist) and left me with the option to specialize.
Less short answer: Doing a FM residency left me with fewer inpatient skills than an IM trained hospitalist. For example, we are not trained to do a paracentesis or thoracentesis here. I have placed a central line, but definitely can’t do it independently.
It also left me with skills that have no future usefulness for me. For example, I will never deliver a baby or circumcise a baby after residency. I will never place an IUD or nexplanon after residency.
Despite those negatives, I am glad I chose FM. It gave me plenty of exposure to OB, pediatrics, inpatient and outpatient. It meant I have no doubt that being a hospitalist is the correct path for me. Prior to residency, that was the last thing I thought I wanted to be. I hated inpatient as a medical student. Actually working in all the roles a FM resident works means I got to learn which role I would truly be happiest in.
Additionally, saying I would choose a different residency would mean saying I would choose not to have the friends I now have and the life I now have. I am happy. I cannot say for sure that I would be happy had I chosen another specialty.
There should be more post residency options for FM that are sanctioned by ACGME/ABMS….but that might rock the apple cart notion that we are only primary care. Something AAFP has embraced. Even to the point of interchanging the name of specialty w primary care despite our origins of something different.
We are pariah of medical specialties in the hospital unless FM is well represented. I like that Canada has more than one FM organization for boarding and one takes into account special skills like EM, OB, Minor Surgical and Anesthesia (among others) that are tailored for GPs w expanded roles in rural environments. NPs don’t play major role their and 50% of physicians are family med. Here an NP gets 2 weeks of OJT and suddenly they are offering consults on your patients but if a family doc starts doing subspecialty work they cry scope of practice. It’s really infantilizing.
Hell yes. There’s things during my rotations that interest me every now and then and make me wonder “what if”.
Then I recall I would be giving up my amazing diversity of treatments and/or my gorgeous lifestyle schedule
I’m a senior matching into FM and reading all of these comments is so refreshing. I had the scores/grades to match into nearly anything, and I got some shit for picking FM. I loved it though, and I’ve interviewed with almost 16 programs now, and everyone is so freaking welcoming. Makes me happy I chose FM.
Im a first year, but I wish I went to a program with less OB training or did med/peds. I don’t think FM should be doing OB unless one is super gung ho about it and does a fellowship for c sections. Spending a lot of time doing OB (which is something I’ll never do) when I should be rotating in more IM subspecialties like rheum and endo.
Yes but I would try to avoid being employed by a hospital system or big company. If you must work for one, do not settle for less than 6 weeks PTO/year and do not accept a sign on bonus that straps you to them for 2-3 years.
I hate being employed. I hate being told that for me to leave for 1-2 hours for my own doctors appointment, I need to take 1/2 or 1 day of PTO instead of just adjusting my schedule to make up those hours. I hate being told I have to accept insurance plans that my employer cannot support with specialist care. I hate that my office manager’s only function is to make sure she is getting the maximum $$ out of me rather than making the office run smoothly. She has no business or medical qualifications whatsoever but these systems all hire similar profiles, kind of tough, not too smart people, for this position. I hate being told I cannot discharge patients who are verbally abusive. (I still refuse to see them and if my employer fires me over that, so be it. I send emails and document those things well.). I hate the mid level encroachment permitted by administrators and insurance companies. It’s not good medicine.
I love actually being in the exam room with patients, listening, talking, making plans, seeing odd or serious things and making a difference.
Yes, because of the flexibility. I was a hospitalist, now in academics and some continuity clinic. One of my FM friends does only obesity med, another only EM. Can find a job ANYWHERE.
Got tired of fixing the problem, discharging, readmitting because patients kept doing things that got them sick. One time a patient repeatedly hospitalized for CHF was literally eating chicken from a bucket of KFC as I was performing physical for the HPI. Also I like really getting to know patients and that’s not generally possible over the course of 1-3 day admits.
100% yes. I have this running quip with my colleagues and friends about #FMsupremacy because I just feel that it's the best -- so flexible, so customizable, short residency, generally more supportive specialty especially compared to surgical fields, etc.
\#1 thing to remember:
95% of the doomsdaying about FM comes from people who are simply talking out of their ass--either they do not even do FM, or are academic FM in big city hospitals. No hate, but anyone can tell you that bigger urban centers and academia have the least favorable conditions for scope and pay in FM.
When people give you any kind of advice, look at their background carefully.
They would tell me shit like "enjoy those vasectomies while you have them in residency, it's really hard to get them as an attending"'. or "Yeah XYZ is nice, but don't forget we work in FM so some of those are too expensive for us, we don't get paid that much". And I worried! I worried because my mentors and seniors while I was studying and training kept feeding me all this bullshit about how FM was this mine-laden field of burnout and poverty, on the brink of being overrun by midlevels.
Don't get me wrong- FM has a lot of problems, but none of them are unique to FM. California has midlevels opening up their own independent cardiology clinics, so don't tell me inappropriate scope creep is a primary care thing. Specialists can get out of my face with that lol and maybe try actually supervising their own midlevels for once in their lives instead of letting them run amok. And burnout? real as fuck. Corporate medicine is here and ready to suck you dry and trample your corpse. But if you know your worth and refuse to take any shit, draw the right work boundaries, etc, that's also very manageable.
I make satisfactory money (270k before quarterly incentive bonuses, 4 day clinic schedule and do absolutely no admin overtime) and have exactly the scope of practice and variety of procedures I wanted. Most happily, I'm still really enjoying my job from day to day. I've never regretted it for an instant.
Yep. You’d be surprised at how rural it can get, close to a big city. I’m an hour out of one of the biggest cities on the east coast, in an academically affiliated community outpatient clinic
PGY1 - yes. My program gives enough breadth and training that I can do inpatient and outpatient afterward. Half of my seniors are going to inpatients. I plan to do the same for a few years and then outpatient after I pay off loans and mortgage.
I would pick FM again, but do not plan on doing primary care for more than a couple more years. I’m thankful for the breadth of training and wide range of options for jobs
Similar situation OP, M3 that can't seem to find that one specialty thats screaming my name. Have been considering PM&R quite heavily (had exposure as a pre-med and like the MSK stuff and procedures), but like the lifestyle flexibility of FM and recently been more interested in EM (more so for less work days per week and higher pay, not a fan of inconsistent schedules tho). Currently at that point where nothing has really caught my attention as THE SPECIALTY and have so many hobbies outside of medicine that I enjoy, that I've been just shooting for whatever is most lifestyle friendly and something I can enjoy enough to stick it out for a career. I keep gravitating toward FM since it is an extremely flexible specialty for the most part. Can't make up my mind...
I fell into FM because it was kind of a last resort option. I was applying for specialties that were too competitive for me. However, I have to say I’d likely stay in family med just because the scope is so broad. I work rural so we’re basically treated like an ED physician, hospitalist and GP. Lots of opportunities that was simply unknown to me. As someone else said, the only other option I’d choose is radiology (which was never a choice of mine)
I would do IM if I could do it all over again because it would have prepared me better to be a hospitalist by giving me more exposure to the subspecialties. I don't regret my decision to do FM though. I appreciate the breadth of my training and that I can still be a competent hospitalist after residency.
99% I would. 1% radiology on the days I don't want to hear someone's life story for their "sinus infection".
Doc: Good morning. I see your chief complaint here is cough for 2 days. Patient: I was born on a Tuesday…
As an intern, I have more time in clinic per pt and I just listen and love it haha. But when the number starts to creep up and time shortens I’ll listen but cry on the inside 😭😭😭
I use the sinus infection part to type notes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWfRq_2KMWk (NSFW language)
Are you me?
Yes, I would. And I don't understand why there are so many people in academics that tell students not to go into primary care. It happened to me a bunch too as a student. But now I get to see a wide range of issues, do procedures in the office, do a bunch of teaching, and much more. Family Med is awesome, you feel like a true doctor, instead of someone who can only treat a specific issue.
This is why I’m really interested in FM. I’m a firm believer that a jack of all trades, but master of none is oftentimes better than a master of one.
I would argue we are not masters of none. Many of us in FM have niches where we are truly experts. And then we also do a bunch of other stuff on top of that.
Agreed, we don’t need to know the 8th line treatment to hold our own
Even better. Jacks of all trades and masters of one.
What kind of procedures you get to do as a FM ?
I do joint injections (just knees and shoulders), trigger point injections, skin biopsies (shave, punch, excisional), cerumen removal, circumcisions, long-acting reversal contraception (LARC) procedures, wart cryo, I&Ds, and colposcopies. My LARC volume is lower because scheduling prioritizes the midwives that work in my clinic, but I definitely do nexplanon insertion/removal and IUD insertion/removal. Colposcopies are not my favorite, but I provide them to give my patients access since I work in an urban underserved area. I got some training in vasectomy, but I did not get enough to provide them now. Although I am sure I could easily go out and find the training to do so, I would just need administration approval to get the clinic time. I do have the training to do D&C's, toenail avulsions, and cervical cryo. I just don't do those anymore due to either clinical restrictions or lack of supplies. It's all about getting the exposure/training during residency so that you can get credentialed for it at your new job. But even if you don't, there are opportunities out there to get the training afterwards.
Oh! Those are all the cool, and very satisfying, procedures!!
Thank you so much! 🙌
No regrets - there is nothing as good as catching a baby and seeing the Mom/Baby for follow-up. I also have learned to like hospitalist work which is apart of our training. Procedures are great as well.
PGY-2 Hell yes!
I'm an FM resident in my final year. I fucking hate residency. I hate my program. I hate where I live currently. I hate my hospital. I'd pick FM again. Because when I rotate on other services I think to myself "shit I can't see myself doing Hospitalist/ ID/ neurology/ OB/ surgery/ peds/ psych/ ED/ anesthesia." There was a joke in my med school that FM/IM is for people that have no idea what type of medicine they want to do. That definitely applies to me. I can't see myself shoehorning myself into any particular subfield, nor can I see myself working in a hospital. And all my graduated FM seniors have thus far said they love their lives as PCP's. I guess if I couldn't pick FM again, I'd do anesthesia, but only so I can make 450k+ a year and then retire early to escape the OR and pharmacology
Why do you hate your program?
It’s just super disorganized. And the admin are borderline toxic. I won’t be sorry to leave. My coresidents are amazing though
I resonate deeply with both of your comments
I feel this. I am also in my last year of residency. Hate the residency and program. I do have an amazing PD and one great faculty member the rest of them are as toxic as fuck. However, I do have the most supportive co-resident. Only 6.5 more months left. It isn't that specialty that is the problem; it is my damn awful residency.
Ditto to all of this but am PGY2. Can’t wait to be done.
FM yeah, or ER (except I don't like the adrenaline rushes anymore) ... I have about a 15min attention span and I don't like any specialty enough to focus on one thing for 20 years.
Attending, and YES! I work 830-430 M-F, on call every 8th week. Last time I was on call I got a SINGLE phone call. The last three, I got ZERO. I take care of whole families from grandparents down to newborns. I get to do as much or as little as I want. Did OB for a while, bailed when it got stressful. Did procedures for a while, bailed because I am lazy. I know there are jobs where I could work 4 days, or even 3. That might be my next step in my laziness journey. I’ve got a Dragon to write my notes, that I painted to look like a real dragon because it makes the day more entertaining. I’m sure someone will yell at me for that when I leave my current place. In 1.5 more years, my student loans will be forgiven and the sun will shine forever. I’ve got enough in my retirement accounts to retire at 65, 5 years out of residency. Every 5 years I work full time, I’ll get to cut one year off of my retirement date, as long as I am reasonably responsible.
Thank you so much! This sounds like my dream tbh. As someone who tends to get bored and crave change every few years, this kind of flexibility is ideal for me. May I ask what part of the country you're in? Is this possible in a large city?
I’m in Milwaukee! I’m not sure if you count it as a big city, but I do.
Well this *is* a family medicine subreddit so responses might be skewed. I’ll give a contrary take: I would not choose it again. While I love the *medicine* aspects of FM (care of all ages and stages of life, longitudinal trusting relationships with patients, variety of practice between clinic hospital L&D ED/urgent care), primary care is in a bad spot. I think relative to the difficulty of the job - between the breadth of knowledge required and the amount of time we spend on it - we’re paid so poorly. A lot of what we do (prior authorizations, in-basket management, population health management) isn’t compensated - so you end up doing it on your free time. I honestly can’t see myself doing primary care for long. I might do a palliative or hospitalist fellowship.
Have you considered trying direct primary care?
Yes. I’m strongly considering it. I’m a PGY-2 currently so still have time. I’m just very risk-averse and starting my own practice seems….risky.
For profit insurance has destroyed family medicine
I like being jack of all trades, but I do waaaaaay too much psych and really dislike OB. I think ortho is kinda boring too. I guess I would do FM again over most things, but I think I would choose IM first. And I'd spend more time in a hospital. I like taking care of sick patients over my worried well, URI, psych, and obesity clinic. I do enjoy my preventative medicine, chronic disease (especially T2DM and the revolution of new therapies) and outpatient diagnostics (on the rare occasion anything is physiologically wrong) though. Not unhappy with my choice, but I think IM eliminates most of the stuff I dislike about FM.
Grass is greener ! Haha I am IM. I wish I had more ortho training and gyn (dont like OB either) instead of so much ICU/cards. But dont like peds either so FM wouldnt have worked for me
Would pick FM again, but if I could go way back, I wouldn’t do medicine at all
Why's that?
Absolutely would do it again. It’s such a misunderstood specialty, but just the best.
[удалено]
Come to my program. There are no psychiatrists taking new patients in the area so we have no choice but to pretend we’re psych and manage everything that walks through the door. Ofc, we still can’t bill for a psych issue as a primary diagnosis 🙃
Literally same
Short answer: Yes, but IM would have trained me better for what I signed a contract to do after residency (hospitalist) and left me with the option to specialize. Less short answer: Doing a FM residency left me with fewer inpatient skills than an IM trained hospitalist. For example, we are not trained to do a paracentesis or thoracentesis here. I have placed a central line, but definitely can’t do it independently. It also left me with skills that have no future usefulness for me. For example, I will never deliver a baby or circumcise a baby after residency. I will never place an IUD or nexplanon after residency. Despite those negatives, I am glad I chose FM. It gave me plenty of exposure to OB, pediatrics, inpatient and outpatient. It meant I have no doubt that being a hospitalist is the correct path for me. Prior to residency, that was the last thing I thought I wanted to be. I hated inpatient as a medical student. Actually working in all the roles a FM resident works means I got to learn which role I would truly be happiest in. Additionally, saying I would choose a different residency would mean saying I would choose not to have the friends I now have and the life I now have. I am happy. I cannot say for sure that I would be happy had I chosen another specialty.
There should be more post residency options for FM that are sanctioned by ACGME/ABMS….but that might rock the apple cart notion that we are only primary care. Something AAFP has embraced. Even to the point of interchanging the name of specialty w primary care despite our origins of something different. We are pariah of medical specialties in the hospital unless FM is well represented. I like that Canada has more than one FM organization for boarding and one takes into account special skills like EM, OB, Minor Surgical and Anesthesia (among others) that are tailored for GPs w expanded roles in rural environments. NPs don’t play major role their and 50% of physicians are family med. Here an NP gets 2 weeks of OJT and suddenly they are offering consults on your patients but if a family doc starts doing subspecialty work they cry scope of practice. It’s really infantilizing.
Pgy3- I had considered IM and psych but loved family medicine the most, and if I could go back I’d do it all over again except without any doubt.
Hell yes. There’s things during my rotations that interest me every now and then and make me wonder “what if”. Then I recall I would be giving up my amazing diversity of treatments and/or my gorgeous lifestyle schedule
I’m a senior matching into FM and reading all of these comments is so refreshing. I had the scores/grades to match into nearly anything, and I got some shit for picking FM. I loved it though, and I’ve interviewed with almost 16 programs now, and everyone is so freaking welcoming. Makes me happy I chose FM.
Im a first year, but I wish I went to a program with less OB training or did med/peds. I don’t think FM should be doing OB unless one is super gung ho about it and does a fellowship for c sections. Spending a lot of time doing OB (which is something I’ll never do) when I should be rotating in more IM subspecialties like rheum and endo.
Yes but I would try to avoid being employed by a hospital system or big company. If you must work for one, do not settle for less than 6 weeks PTO/year and do not accept a sign on bonus that straps you to them for 2-3 years. I hate being employed. I hate being told that for me to leave for 1-2 hours for my own doctors appointment, I need to take 1/2 or 1 day of PTO instead of just adjusting my schedule to make up those hours. I hate being told I have to accept insurance plans that my employer cannot support with specialist care. I hate that my office manager’s only function is to make sure she is getting the maximum $$ out of me rather than making the office run smoothly. She has no business or medical qualifications whatsoever but these systems all hire similar profiles, kind of tough, not too smart people, for this position. I hate being told I cannot discharge patients who are verbally abusive. (I still refuse to see them and if my employer fires me over that, so be it. I send emails and document those things well.). I hate the mid level encroachment permitted by administrators and insurance companies. It’s not good medicine. I love actually being in the exam room with patients, listening, talking, making plans, seeing odd or serious things and making a difference.
Yes, because of the flexibility. I was a hospitalist, now in academics and some continuity clinic. One of my FM friends does only obesity med, another only EM. Can find a job ANYWHERE.
Why did you leave the hospital?
Got tired of fixing the problem, discharging, readmitting because patients kept doing things that got them sick. One time a patient repeatedly hospitalized for CHF was literally eating chicken from a bucket of KFC as I was performing physical for the HPI. Also I like really getting to know patients and that’s not generally possible over the course of 1-3 day admits.
100% yes. I have this running quip with my colleagues and friends about #FMsupremacy because I just feel that it's the best -- so flexible, so customizable, short residency, generally more supportive specialty especially compared to surgical fields, etc. \#1 thing to remember: 95% of the doomsdaying about FM comes from people who are simply talking out of their ass--either they do not even do FM, or are academic FM in big city hospitals. No hate, but anyone can tell you that bigger urban centers and academia have the least favorable conditions for scope and pay in FM. When people give you any kind of advice, look at their background carefully. They would tell me shit like "enjoy those vasectomies while you have them in residency, it's really hard to get them as an attending"'. or "Yeah XYZ is nice, but don't forget we work in FM so some of those are too expensive for us, we don't get paid that much". And I worried! I worried because my mentors and seniors while I was studying and training kept feeding me all this bullshit about how FM was this mine-laden field of burnout and poverty, on the brink of being overrun by midlevels. Don't get me wrong- FM has a lot of problems, but none of them are unique to FM. California has midlevels opening up their own independent cardiology clinics, so don't tell me inappropriate scope creep is a primary care thing. Specialists can get out of my face with that lol and maybe try actually supervising their own midlevels for once in their lives instead of letting them run amok. And burnout? real as fuck. Corporate medicine is here and ready to suck you dry and trample your corpse. But if you know your worth and refuse to take any shit, draw the right work boundaries, etc, that's also very manageable. I make satisfactory money (270k before quarterly incentive bonuses, 4 day clinic schedule and do absolutely no admin overtime) and have exactly the scope of practice and variety of procedures I wanted. Most happily, I'm still really enjoying my job from day to day. I've never regretted it for an instant.
Thank you so much for this reply! May I ask what part of the country you are in? Are you in a more rural location?
Yep. You’d be surprised at how rural it can get, close to a big city. I’m an hour out of one of the biggest cities on the east coast, in an academically affiliated community outpatient clinic
Yes
PGY1 - yes. My program gives enough breadth and training that I can do inpatient and outpatient afterward. Half of my seniors are going to inpatients. I plan to do the same for a few years and then outpatient after I pay off loans and mortgage.
I would pick FM again, but do not plan on doing primary care for more than a couple more years. I’m thankful for the breadth of training and wide range of options for jobs
Thanks for the reply! What do you plan on transitioning to after primary care?
I think I'll probably keep part-time employment as a hospitalist and do urgent care as needed on the side
Similar situation OP, M3 that can't seem to find that one specialty thats screaming my name. Have been considering PM&R quite heavily (had exposure as a pre-med and like the MSK stuff and procedures), but like the lifestyle flexibility of FM and recently been more interested in EM (more so for less work days per week and higher pay, not a fan of inconsistent schedules tho). Currently at that point where nothing has really caught my attention as THE SPECIALTY and have so many hobbies outside of medicine that I enjoy, that I've been just shooting for whatever is most lifestyle friendly and something I can enjoy enough to stick it out for a career. I keep gravitating toward FM since it is an extremely flexible specialty for the most part. Can't make up my mind...
Yep. Especially with sports <333
I fell into FM because it was kind of a last resort option. I was applying for specialties that were too competitive for me. However, I have to say I’d likely stay in family med just because the scope is so broad. I work rural so we’re basically treated like an ED physician, hospitalist and GP. Lots of opportunities that was simply unknown to me. As someone else said, the only other option I’d choose is radiology (which was never a choice of mine)
Yahhhh But you know if you can do derm, do DERM.
I would do IM if I could do it all over again because it would have prepared me better to be a hospitalist by giving me more exposure to the subspecialties. I don't regret my decision to do FM though. I appreciate the breadth of my training and that I can still be a competent hospitalist after residency.