Thanks for the insights, guys. I go back and forth with family med, it is much more appealing to me than internal med and seems like there is a lot of potential for flexibility and variety. I'm looking forward to doing some shadowing with my mentor in the next couple of months who is a very energetic, well-liked family doc. I've wondered though if it will feel incomplete, like I'm unable to treat someone myself and simply stuck referring most of my patients to specialists (side note: when I went to do my check up to start med school with my family physician, she was very excited to hear that I was going to school then she proceeded to spend the next 20 minutes telling me not to go into family medicine and to do anesthesiology. A few days later I ran into a friend of mine who is an oncologist and I told him what she said and his first words were "Don't do anesthesiology, those guys are assholes." Haha.)
My advice would be to consider if you have other options than medical school at all. Don't be afraid of primary care, but have an exit strategy.
I'm sorry to hear that you are not happy in medicine. I really hope it doesn't happen to me, I don't expect it to as I feel like I'm going in with a good idea of what to expect. I spent 5 years working in public health, working with physicians, nurses, hospital administrators, and even some clinical stuff. Those experiences are what drove me to pursue medicine. I do like the idea of an exit strategy and it's largely why I've considered family med. I have a lot of experience in health policy and worked at a county health department for several years and I've always thought that if clinical medicine didn't go the way I hoped I could fall back into health policy, which I enjoyed enough, just wasn't a big fan of sitting at a desk or in meetings 40 hours a week.
Have you seen this? http://www.bestmedicaldegrees.com/salary-of-doctors/
I've seen that sort of thing before, honestly it irks me though. There's no doubt that physicians spend more time training, and most take out loans to do so (I'm taking out tuition loans but it's in-state at least) and work more than many folks. But attempting to portray physicians as getting the shaft on pay is a bit ridiculous. It reminds me of the annual medscape survey on physician incomes and it includes questions like "Do you feel well-compensated?" and "Do you feel rich?" and by and large the answers are no. If you make $400,000 a year and spend $400,000 a year, you probably don't feel rich. And if you make $200,000 and you know many colleagues that you feel are no smarter or harder working than you are earning $400,000, you probably don't feel well-compensated either. On the other hand, I feel rich and we are living off less than $50,000 a year---but we also don't care about fancy cars, big homes, name brand clothes, etc.
Sorry, I'm not trying to poo-poo that whole thing, but I guess for me the point is that regardless of that argument, I do know that going back to school, even with 4 years of no income and 3+ years on a resident income, will drastically shorten our path to FI.
Also, EM is up there on my short list!
Pretty well, see my journal @ Happy Aussie Downshifter.
Thanks! Will check it out.
2. Apply some self knowledge: are you a thinker and like time to think (internal medicine/?psych), do you like working with your hands, lots of money and long hours (surgery), like variety/ fast pace - family med, but if you like a bit of adrenalin ED/rural/remote retrievals.
I always felt I was suited most for family med or primary care. A few months ago though I took this medical specialty inventory test though (~100 questions on interests, goals, etc) and it came back overwhelmingly surgery (orthopedics, then general) and emergency medicine, with family med way down on the list. At first I blew it off and then started to think about why and realized a lot of it makes sense (being hands on, being able to make a patient "better", seeing a variety of patient types).
I'm really looking forward to starting my rotations just so I can see first hand and no more theoretical and see what I enjoy the most.