Are there kinds of tests I can take to figure out the kind of doctor I would be good at?

Question

I am a Pre-Med major, but I'm drawn between the kind of doctor I want to be. I either want to be a Cardiologist, Infectious Diseases, or something with diagnositics.

Answer 1

Yup - it's called your clinical rotations in medical school.  You don't specialize until after you graduate with your MD degree.  (That is what residency is for.)

The last 2 years of medical school consists of in-hospital training in a variety of specialties.  You'll figure out pretty quickly where you fit in and where you don't.

BTW, all medicine deals with diagnostics.  That's what doctors DO.  The two specialties that you listed require fellowship training, so you'd actually have the three years of internal medicine training to decide.

What you really need to focus on is getting into med school.  Good luck.

Answer 2

Yes. It's the third year of medical school, where you actually get a little exposure to what you're thinking of. There's no point in investing any time on the subject earlier.

Answer 3

I don't know about any tests you can take, but honestly, a huge number of medical students wind up changing their field once the get in there and get some clinical expoerience.

Like someone who initially thought they wanted to go for cardiology might do a rotation in radiology and be totally hooked; someone who wanted to be a pediatrician winds up loving surgery so much they wind up being a general surgeon.

I'm not saying don't be forward looking, lots of docs know exactly what they want from day one and never sway from that course, but while you are in Premed I would suggest keeping your options open and take as many courses you can that will help you in the areas you have mentioned.  Clinicals and residency will eventually be your decision maker.  Good luck!

Answer 4

This is what the third and fourth year of medical school are for.  *g*

There are tests out there that will ask you a lot of questions and try and "fit" a specialty to your personality, but I wouldn't trust them.  The real answer will come when you are on rotations and you start to get a taste of what all those different specialties are like.  In third year, you pretty much go through the basics (medicine, surgery, OB/GYN, psych, peds, maybe neurology or radiology) and then you can start to choose electives based on what you think you might be interested in.  For cardiology or ID, you'll be doing an internal medicine residency first followed by a fellowship in the specialty, so you'd want to be sure you liked medicine.  If it turns out you really love surgery, maybe you'd turn your thoughts to something like interventional cardiology or even cardiothoracic surgery.  You'll also see what it's like to be in those professions once you finish school and residency, and that may also have an impact on your final choice.

Most doctors have something to do with diagnostics. *g*  There is something called a "hospitalist," which is someone in any specialty who oversees the care of patients with those specific problems in the hospital--their admitting physician may be their own doctor, and they will still be seen by that doctor, but the hospitalist helps coordinate their care while they're admitted.

There is no such thing as House in the real world.  ;-)