When I grow up to be a (wo)man...

That old Beach Boys song is stuck in my head, but luckily, I love it. I've had a chance lately to pause and try to figure out where I'm going professionally -- okay, so I still want to be in medicine. That's a good sign. I have a loooong time until I have to decide what kind of medicine -- until the end of my MS3 year -- but I figured it couldn't hurt to have a peek at the different specialties out there and what they entail, right? Wow. Um. There are 125 specialties and subspecialties. I also found an article that did a huge national survey and found that: internal med geriatricians, pediatricians, and 'other' were among the most satisfied with their careers, rehab docs were neutral, and OB/GYNs, opthalmologists, and ENTs were among the least satisfied.

That said, here are my flavors of the week:

Pediatrics
Medical Genetics (maybe peds+ this)
Geriatrics
Meds-Peds (internal med + peds)
Endocrinology
Rheumatology
Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Family
OB/GYN

This is a pretty diverse crowd. But many of them have certain things in common: transitional life stages (peds/family/geriatrics/OB), bone/immune stuff (rheumatology, geriatrics, rehab), or they have to do with genetics and metabolism (genetics, endocrinology).

Of course, the lifestyles, hours, working environment, and compensation for each of these varies quite a bit, too. But one thing I like is that I think every option here can be done in five years of residency post-MD (OMG I'm going to be AT LEAST 30 when I'm finally out there practicing on my own).

Which brings me to another often-mentioned topic: family and medicine. As in, how to have a family while practicing medicine. We get told all the time now that our biological clock for childbearing is about 35, and while I certainly do not harbor any maternal yearnings at the moment, that's no guarantee that they won't suddenly materialize in five years' time.

Hmm... right now I'm just sort of not thinking about it and hoping it will all work out somehow. Is there some sort of miraculous work/life balancing method that I should be aware of? I guess, now that I force myself to think about it, there are two things that are crucial:

1) Pick a specialty that is as family-friendly as possible while also being as fulfilling as possible (I have a feeling those two are related).

2) Make sure my future family knows what they're in for :)

Right now, I'm leaning towards peds-genetics. I seriously heart genetics. But who knows? That may be different next week.