Specialties

There are several divisions you can make among specialties in medicine. They can be surgical and nonsurgical. I don't think I want to go into a surgical specialty because they emphasize technical skills (which I may not have) over cognitive ones. They focus on anatomy of a specific region of the body. The training is longer, and there is a culture of surgeons. You can also split specialties by procedural and nonprocedural. Procedural specialties (like surgery) do technically difficult stuff; they put in central lines and Foley catheters and repair cataracts. Nonprocedural specialties include pediatrics and family medicine and infectious diseases. They see patients and do regular check-ups and are involved with a lot of the intellectual differential diagnosis. But they don't do technically challenging (and expensive) maneuvers. Finally, there's a division between patient care and non-patient care. This is a little confusing for people not familiar with medicine. All doctors are involved with treating patients, but some are more direct than others. Primary care doctors (family practice, pediatrics) are all patient care; they are the first people you go to when you have problems. Non-patient care specialties include pathology, radiology, and dermatology. These doctors will analyze tissue biopsies, X-rays, and skin disorders, but they don't have a regular cohort of patients. Sometimes the best way to choose a specialty is to decide which of these divisions plays out best for you. I think I would lean toward a nonsurgical procedural specialty, but I don't know at the moment.