Choosing a specialty is one of the biggest decisions you'll make in medicine, and most students weigh the wrong things. In this episode, a practicing hospitalist and walk-in clinic physician skips the match rates and salary tables and shares the thinking frameworks he wishes he'd had: why to prepare for the most competitive specialties early, how to think honestly about money and time to income, and why lifestyle is really about control over your time.
We also go behind the scenes of what specialties look like in real life, from limited OR time to private practice overhead, and why chasing status and prestige is one of the fastest routes to burnout. This is for premeds, medical students, and anyone still deciding where they fit in medicine.
0:00 How Not to Choose Your Specialty
2:13 Prepare for the Most Competitive Specialties
5:07 Money Matters, and That's Okay
9:28 Lifestyle and Control Over Your Time
16:17 The Behind the Scenes of Each Specialty
20:53 Forget Status and Prestige
24:45 Final Thoughts
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About Me
I am a physician (M.D.) practicing a mix of hospitalist medicine, and urgent care. I learned a lot in my journey to becoming a physician and about more than just medicine. Follow along as I reflect and teach what I wish I knew, which for the most part, is the stuff you don’t learn in school.
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