Annoying question

Just about the most annoying question that medical student like me come across is 'Which specialty to you want to do?'. People love this question: patients, doctors, nurses, parents, relatives, strangers. Why do I hate the question? Because I truely don't know. So is more than half of the medical students. We are seeing new things everyday and everything new we see would interest us in one way or another. But I have to say I do think about this question more intensely nowadays. Finals is looming and before we know it, we'll be asked that same question in our job application form.

I love acute stuff. My favourite placements are A&E and emergency assessment unit. I love to see fresh patients, thinking and making diagnosis from scratch, getting investigations to confirm my diagnosis and see the patient benefit from my immediate management right in front of my very eyes. The variety of presentations and the hands on approach turn me on. I also like the teamwork, communication and support from your peers. I know I would be under pressure all the time, but that's exactly what I am after. The downside would be the lack of opportunity to form long term therapeutic relationship with the patients. But that's not entirely true. In my short 4 weeks stint in A&E, I came to know an alcoholic man living on the streets who came in every other night quite well.

I'm still keeping my options open. I think I'm geared more towards medicine rather than surgery. The one type of disease that perpetually gets me excited is vasculitis. I find multisystem involvement because of the underlying pathology fascinating. I hated surgery because I found it boring, yet this perception has changed since I was allowed to scrub in for the first time in my life. I'd love to learn all the physiology behind anaesthetics, yet I find the working condition (sitting through surgery, listening to beeps, plotting obs charts) rather unbearable. However I won't mind working in ICU. I used to like psychiatry, but not anymore. I loved the stories of delusions, before I realise that most of them are just the same. The pace is just too slow for me. GP is ok, I had two brilliant placements, one OK and the current one horrible, and it's the horrible one which puts me off completely. The variety is there, but the support is not - you work on your own most of the time, which will depress me eventually. Lots of paperwork. Yet it's so rewarding when you become almost a part of someone's family, and home visit is the best part of being a GP. Most of the time the only treatment that patients needs is so simple - a pair of lending ears, good explanation and reassurance, which my current GP fails to realise.

So this is my elaborated answer to the annoying question. Please resist the temptation to ask me again.

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