Medical School Update #9: Which Specialty Did I Choose?

Hello everyone I hope you are all doing well and in the best of health mentally, physically, and emotionally. Please keep our Palestinian brothers and sisters 🇵🇸 in your prayers. It breaks my heart what these beautiful people are going through but Allah (swt) is always with the oppressed people and justice will be theirs by His Will, Ameen! 🤲🏾🤲🏾🤲🏾

Anyway, alhamdudillah I am more than halfway done with my last year of medical school! It truly does not feel real. I still cannot fully comprehend that I am almost done with some of the most gut-wrenching years of my life. If you have been reading my blogs for the past three years, then you know that med school was not it. At all! There have been many trials and tribulations along the way and I forreal thought I would not even make it this far. It felt like every single exam was my last. By the grace of God, I made it through and only by His grace cause babes, it was the trenches out here! 😭

Anyway, I wanted to talk about how I chose the current specialty I am applying to and a little bit about how 4th year is going. If you have been an avid reader of my blog (lol you do not have to be, I write a lot), then you can probably guess based on the rotation reviews and ratings on which specialty I am applying for. But I just wanted to give a background about what I thought I would be doing before medical school started and how I came to my current decision.

So in 8th grade, one of my classmates talked about her grandmother and how she had a gynecological condition (I think cervical cancer?) which motivated her to pursue Ob/gyn as a career. I had no idea what an Ob/gyn was but because this classmate said this I thought hmm this is the type of doctor I will be. And I kind of just stuck with that. Later on, I learned more about maternal mortality and how Black women are the most affected by this. Bet, I could become an Ob/gyn and have a tangible effect on the community. Keep in mind anytime I would try to watch a video of a c-section or vaginal delivery on youtube I would immediately click out due to fear. Keep in mind I have never seen a live childbirth. Keep in mind I have not seen any pap smears performed ever. I just thought because I am a Black Muslim woman, this is the field I belong in. Right?

This sort of continued until I got into medical school. I had a shadowing experience with a Muslim hospitalist which I loved. But I felt that I should be doing Ob/Gyn, so I just stuck with it. I did research with the Ob/gyn department at my school and I tried to involve myself with anything related to the field. I even talked with the Ob/gyn clerkship director about my interest in the field. It seemed like everything was pointing in the direction for me to do this field.

Then, I started my Ob/gyn clerkship. You can read more about it here but y’all, I was MISERABLE. The hours were long. Standing in the operating room made me dizzy. I did not want to watch another c-section. I was counting down the days for the rotation to end. On my last day, I cried tears of relief. It was finally over!

However, now that left me with a dilemma:

Which specialty am I going to choose?

After Ob/gyn, I started my Internal Medicine rotation. After everything I experienced in my previous rotation, I was so scared to start this one. It was notorious for being difficult and I thought I had to be extremely smart to do well on this rotation. However, with time, I actually started to enjoy my rotation. I like how I got to sit down and think about each of my patients and their concerns. I appreciated the different pathologies. I appreciated the work up. I appreciated getting to communicate with different professions and sub-specialists. I appreciated the variety that it provided me. I also worked in an outpatient clinic for Internal Medicine and I loved the continuity of care. So maybe I should specialize in Internal Medicine?

But I still did not have my Pediatric or Family Medicine rotation so I held off on making that decision. By this time, it was time to schedule for the 4th year rotations. And I still did not have a specialty picked out.

I reached out to both the Internal Medicine and Family Medicine career advisors. I kept the Pediatrics advisor contact in my back pocket just in case I decided to change my mind on both of those. I prayed about it, asking God to guide me to the specialty that would be best for me. The Family Medicine advisor responded first, welcoming me and scheduling a meeting for the both of us to further discuss.

So it was looking like Family Medicine then. I mean I had a classmate tell me I would do well in FM so maybe that’s the specialty I should be doing. I did not hear back from the Internal Medicine advisor and I briefly mentioned it to my clerkship director during my IM midterm feedback. “What?”, He exclaimed. “You would be great in IM!” Really? Me? After that, I got a message back from the IM advisor, and my meeting with her was scheduled for the day after my FM advisor meeting. I did not think much of it though, I was sure I would likely be doing Family Medicine.

The meeting with the Family Medicine advisor was great. She sat me down and explained what Family Medicine was all about. She talked about the wide variety of patients a family doctor sees and how they truly connect with their patients. I was inspired by it. But for some reason, I was still hesitant about committing to it and making my 4th year schedule around it. I had my forms for the schedule that needed to be signed lying next to me and she told me when I felt ready later on I could give them to her.

The next day was my meeting with the Internal Medicine advisor. It was more succinct and she explained why she chose Internal Medicine with a further specialization in Infectious Diseases. She talked about how in undergrad she majored in microbiology and was always interested in molecular pathways which I related to as a biochem major. She also told me about the opportunities internal medicine offered especially with sub-specialization. She took my papers from the desk and signed them for me. “Here, I have these signed. Just fill it out and then if you decide to change your mind, you can email me.” Wait, she could just sign? Just like that? And I can fill out my schedule on my own? Well, it looks like I will be having electives related to Internal Medicine then.

Everything just started falling into place for me. I thought because my 4th year was delayed due to step one that I would not be able to graduate on time. However, after talking with my school counselor, she scheduled all of my courses that would get me set on track. What? I received opportunities related to Internal Medicine such as away rotations and faculty support. It seemed like I was going on the right trajectory. But what if I decided I wanted to do something else? Then I would have to switch my whole schedule around. 😩😩😩

I still considered peds as a possibility. However, after my peds rotation (which was its own nightmare), I knew I did not want to treat children as a physician. So all I had left was my Family Medicine rotation to finally determine if I made the right decision on my future specialty.

Time was running out. My Family Medicine rotation in May, right when most of my classmates had 100% decided on the specialty they were pursuing and were either studying for step 2 and/or doing electives to boost their CVs. Throughout the rotation, I realized I enjoyed Family Medicine. I liked how I could see all types of patients and the continuity of care. However, whenever I would have a peds patient to see with my resident, I would suddenly get short of breath and nervous, thinking about my terrible pediatric rotation. And whenever I would have a pregnant patient, I would freeze up, thinking about my terrible ob/gyn rotation. It is tragic to think how those experiences shaped patient care for me. I realized that I did not want to treat children or pregnant patients as a provider and wanted to focus just on the management of adult patients. I know I could do that as a family provider or internist but training as an internist will allow me to have a narrow focus on the patient population I wanted to care for.

So yes, if you have read to the end, I applied Internal Medicine. 🎉🎉🎉 It was and still is a little difficult for me to grapple with. Ugh, But why? Because as someone who is a perfectionist and goes through life with checkboxes, this change of what I thought I would be doing specialty-wise vs what I am currently applying for is challenging. I thought I would have a clinic catered to women’s health, helping deliver babies and reducing the maternal mortality rate. I also thought as a Muslim woman, I should want to love to care for just female or pediatric patients. But I am not really doing that. Nor do I want to do that anymore. I felt like a failure for letting my negative rotation experiences inhibit me from doing my previously desired specialty and that I let down a future generation of patients. I felt guilty. I even felt like a bad Muslim. Typing this out now I can see how overly dramatic this is. But that’s how I felt.

Choosing a specialty is hard. You get a glimpse of what each specialty is like as a third-year medical student but you have to make a decision on what you plan to do the rest of your life as a physician based on that. It requires lots of prayers, tears, and trusting in God that you made the right decision. I feel much better with my decision alhamdudillah but there is always that seedling of doubt in the back of my mind. However, I feel like I did not really choose Internal Medicine though. I feel like it chose me. I would have never imagined that I would be applying to Internal Medicine which is why I am still a bit shocked when I think about it. But I am going to lean into the uncertainty and pray for the best. I know this is the specialty I am supposed to pursue and it gets affirmed with each passing day. I think it’s amazing and it will provide me with lots of opportunities to provide care to my patients. I am also just grateful to Allah (swt) for seeing me through all of this and I hope I can see the beautiful reasoning for the path that I am on today.

That’s all for now! 4th year has honestly been so nice, not going to lie. I do not have to study (what?!), and I get to do rotations that I either enjoy or that align with my future career path. I am also on the interview trail so that has been interesting haha. As a student who has literally struggled (!!!) through every aspect of medical school all I can say is alhamdudillah it is coming to an end. Inshallah, cannot wait for what the future holds. Good luck with everything future doctors, I hope and pray that everything works out for you as well!