- Joined
- Jun 28, 2016
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- 30
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I'm only a first year so I have plenty of time to decide this, but I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what exactly it is I want to do. Growing up, I had always envisioned myself as a mixed animal GP, but now that I'm actually in vet school, I'm starting to think large animal stuff may not be for me, and I'm also really enjoying the atmosphere of the teaching hospital. I also know that, in the clinic I worked at for four years before school, I was mostly interested in the sick stuff that we'd end up keeping overnight or sending out to referral hospitals. So now, I'm considering the idea of specializing in internal medicine, and I recently shadowed in that department, which furthered my interest.
Right now, my pros for GP are that I could work pretty much anywhere, that I would see and get to do a little bit of everything, that I could go straight into a "real job" right after graduation, and that I might be able to make patients' lives better through general client education and a more in-depth client-patient-veterinarian relationship. Pros for internal medicine are that I could still see a wide variety of things but that I could do more with them (the hospital environment tends to have access to a wider variety of diagnostics and treatment options, etc.), I would likely get more support in an internship than I would in private practice during my first year, I wouldn't have to spend entire days on vaccine visits and otitis externa and all the other little things that aren't particularly interesting, I greatly enjoy working with complicated cases/diagnostic workups (it's like being a detective), and I would make more money. I'm also considering emergency because it is also interesting and it feels like a sort of compromise, as it's more exciting than GP but you can get emergency jobs without always doing the internship/residency first. With that in particular, though, I'm concerned about work-life balance, as I get the general vibe that emergency is one of the worst hospital departments as far as keeping you all night, working you holidays, etc. I have an artistic passion that I want to make sure my future life has time for (writing), not to mention seeing my partner and potentially even doing the children thing someday.
I was hoping that people in internal medicine and emergency could give me a general idea of what their life is like as far as work-life balance (how many shifts a week and how long they are, etc.), and that I could get some perspectives from other people who were torn between GP and specializing and why you chose the way you did.
Edit: I thought of another question I wanted to ask. For those of you who specialized, how much time did you have to spend on research during your internship/residency? As someone who isn't super into the research aspect, that's something else I've been wondering
Right now, my pros for GP are that I could work pretty much anywhere, that I would see and get to do a little bit of everything, that I could go straight into a "real job" right after graduation, and that I might be able to make patients' lives better through general client education and a more in-depth client-patient-veterinarian relationship. Pros for internal medicine are that I could still see a wide variety of things but that I could do more with them (the hospital environment tends to have access to a wider variety of diagnostics and treatment options, etc.), I would likely get more support in an internship than I would in private practice during my first year, I wouldn't have to spend entire days on vaccine visits and otitis externa and all the other little things that aren't particularly interesting, I greatly enjoy working with complicated cases/diagnostic workups (it's like being a detective), and I would make more money. I'm also considering emergency because it is also interesting and it feels like a sort of compromise, as it's more exciting than GP but you can get emergency jobs without always doing the internship/residency first. With that in particular, though, I'm concerned about work-life balance, as I get the general vibe that emergency is one of the worst hospital departments as far as keeping you all night, working you holidays, etc. I have an artistic passion that I want to make sure my future life has time for (writing), not to mention seeing my partner and potentially even doing the children thing someday.
I was hoping that people in internal medicine and emergency could give me a general idea of what their life is like as far as work-life balance (how many shifts a week and how long they are, etc.), and that I could get some perspectives from other people who were torn between GP and specializing and why you chose the way you did.
Edit: I thought of another question I wanted to ask. For those of you who specialized, how much time did you have to spend on research during your internship/residency? As someone who isn't super into the research aspect, that's something else I've been wondering
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