Med Students: What specialty is right for you?
Published by Haseeb January 29th, 2006 in School, Science/MedicineSomeone sent this out on the listserve on Friday. I thought it was cool and worth sharing.
As a resident physician working in a large academic medical centre, I am in frequent contact with medical students, many of whom feel apprehensive about choosing their future medical specialty. Students complain that they need balanced career guidance extending beyond “my specialty is the best” expressed by many doctors. Inspired by my interactions with residents training in all major specialties, I have created an algorithm to guide students’ choice of specialty on the basis of their personality characteristics. The algorithm has been well received at my institution by students and residents alike, many of whom exclaim: “That is so true.”
Boris Veysman, resident, Yale School of Medicine (Source)
Haha, my dad’s specialty isn’t on there..
What’s your father’s specialty?
so which one are u specializing haseeb?
what category do u think i fall in?
My dad’s an ob/gyn *collective gasp*
I think you’d be a great psychiatrist!
HASEEB! THANK YOU SO MUCH. I was always thinking of Emergency Med but now I know FOR SURE it’s for me… I immediately went to the crazy side and I was like woah - it’s so true, I really do have a non-existent attention span!
AWESOME!
Thanks man - and I’m being totally serious about this.
Insha Allah
, make dua that Allah 
makes me an ER doc, if it’s best. WOOHOO!
hahahaaa! LOVE the chart…not because it tells me what i SHOULD be, but what I need to do to be what I want…nice one! i’m going to send it around in our listserv too, k?
u should drop out and be a drug dealer for all the med school students
was contemplating that
btu I would rather be a narcotics police officer or detective, much cooler drama job.
I dont know what i wanna do. I am not mean enough to be a surgeon,
definitely dont have an attention span adn I love ER anyways.
I dont hate kids but I’d rather work with adults
Definitely not psych.
And OB/GYN, I was thinking about going into it, if you are a female and very very mean then you’d go into OB
the male OB/GYN’s are nice
the females are horrible, I think I they’d kill me if I wnet into that residency than even before killing myself.
medicine is general and you can do med/peds as well, where you are doing both
ER docs make tons of money, lifestyle is not all that but a great profession for a guy, for a girl not so.
I am definitely not sane, but the algorithm is decieving, how many med students do you know are sane?
gosh mujahada…why do you say the ER is better suitable for men and not for women?
from the one-liners about specialties that I have learnt of so far:
1. Obs gyn — you can stand filth. (i know, discriminatory, but that’s the general consensus)
2. ortho — you are a man’s man. like sports. all men, or those few manly women.
3. Int Meds — you know everything about everything.
4. Surgery — you like menial labor. no brain usage required.
5. Derm — good money, NO WORK REQUIRED!
i repeat, all of the above are EXTREMELY simplified opinions.
How many med students are posting here?
What is with WWE?
I never ever had a desire to go into medicine…but masha’Allah
if you guys are into it.
Assalamu Alaikum
we need more muslim doctors. May Allah 
(swt) make us all successful in this life and the hereafter insha’Allah 
. Ameen
Masha’Allah
We need more Muslim doctors?
!
That’s the first time I’ve heard that statement!
Masha’Allah
sure we do,
there are never enough muslim doctors(who are well rounded)?
about the ER part, I actually heard this from an ER attending(muslim guy) who I thought was a resident(oops! but he was muslim, and nice so he didnt mind).
Taking one look at me, he is like, ER is not a real good profession for muslim women,
you are put into compromising situations and uncomfortable situations(now I dont know what he meant by that but I am trusting his opinions, he was a MOunt Sinai SOM graduate).
We need more muslim everything( Doctors, nurses, mechanics…whatever)!!! but muslims who do it for the deen not for the dunya….we need to better our Ummah inshallah and show the world that muslims are the best at everything because of our deen.
i hope that makes sense….
Siham, no it’s all good, I hope you didn’t take my message the wrong way.. it’s just cuz usually we hear “we have enough Muslim doctors/engineers, we need more ulama, journalists, etc” type of statements. It’s just refreshing to hear something else, I agree with you
As-salaamu ‘alaykum
Where do the med-students with a multiple personality go?
Btw: u guyz lack a great profession: house-physician, still exists in the Netherlands!
med students with multiple personalities,
if they are women,
definitely OB/GYN
if they are men, surgery would be good for them.
House-physician is equivalent to a general practitioner, aint it?
oh in the case according to teh algorith,
I should be a radiologist
but rather this is decieving,
the radiologist might not be hardworking
but the student has to be inorder to get those grades
I think, I’d fit best in med/peds.
that’s my speciality.
Assalamu Alaikum,
Danya, well for sure we need more ulema ..but wouldn’t it be great if we had doctors that were ulema? Like Shaykh Abdallah Adhami is a great scholar but he’s also an architect, Tariq Suwaidan is another knowledgable man but he’s also a great buisness man and the list goes on.. lol but a good combination is what we REALLY need.
InshAllah may Allah 
(swt) make us Successful in this life and the hereafter and increase our knowledge. Ameen.
and no worries i didn’t take it the wrong way i just wanted to make sure there was no misunderstanding
Assalamu Alaikum
I guess I see what you’re all on about…but I just find it wrong to say: if you’re a woman, you should be a ___…and vice versa. it’s like how people used to reason that women shouldn’t go into comp. sci, or business, or math.
i believe a medical specialty should be decided on what kind of a personality the person has, not what their gender might be.
I am a girl, yet I don’t want to go into OB/GYN. I don’t want to go into ortho, not because I am not a guy…but because I am genuinely not interested.
ER can be a tough place to work in for women, just because of the crazy times/hours they need to put in. but for those women who aren’t interested in having a family…sure thing. go for it. if that’s what floats your boat
im a UK medic mashallah this is a really informative blog, its nice to see how muslim brothers and sisters in the US have the same aspirations as we do in the UK with regards to deen and education, trying to balance and exceed in both.
cant believe you have to wait until you’re 21 to start medical school though
also how accurate that speciality chart was…surgeons are generally mean, medicine docs are nice, our a and e consultant is just plain weird, maybe thats just at my hospital