What to advise: which specialty for me?

This is an absolutely terrific article about ‘Choosing a specialty’. It focuses on psychiatry and the particularly problems that effect psychiatry but contains many powerful insights that most medics will recognise even if you have not expressed them. Many will not admit to them, and the medical schools will look the other way.

When you ask me whether you should enter psychiatry, your question also becomes whether I would go into psychiatry once again, knowing what I know now. Most people will tell you to enter their profession for that reason. They are justifying their own decisions. Their reply to you is a means of reassuring themselves.

You should ask yourself: Is your main purpose in choosing this line of work to make a living? If it is, then you should know it is, and don’t put too much effort or care into worrying about the work. It isn’t your main purpose in life. Your main purpose in life could be your marriage, or your children, or your larger family. Or it could be another activity other than your main paid work, such as writing, or art, or music, or faith.

The it gets into the DSM….