For those of you aspiring to live a life out of Greys Anatomy, dreaming of caring for patients, or starting your own medical practice, there is a lot to take into consideration when choosing your specialty. Entering the medical field might as well be a formal commitment to sign your life away another 6 plus after your undergrad, full of all-nighters studying, night shifts, and lots of coffee to get you through it.

All negative connotations aside, we are here to say that we admire those of you with a passion to help others and are willing to sacrifice most of your personal life for a few years in the process. While those are important considerations, those with the drive to do it somehow make it through, and that is why we have so many wonderful physicians in various specialties! To make this sound a bit more endearing we want to help you in your search of choosing the medical field that is best suit for you.

We found a helpful article with a few key points in guiding toward the right specialty. As students, you get the opportunity to do clinical rotations giving you hands-on experience in different areas of medicine. This is a great start for those of you considering all options, but for some, making the decision isn’t as clear as can be. This is why we would have decided to share the following points as a form of encouragement as you may these big decisions.

Medical School Headquarters touches on the following points and gives a great analysis on questions and advice you definitely want to consider. Here are a few points we’ve highlighted, but you will want to check out their article for further reading here.

1. Take every opportunity to explore
2. Surgery or Diagnostics?
3. Salary: Important but not everything
4. The Ick Factor
5. Know Yourself
6. Level of competition
7. Variety or a lot of the same?
8. You gotta love your organ

As part of Medical School Headquarters’ number one recommendation, “Take every opportunity to explore”, we recommend interviewing providers in various specialties. We know that many of you don’t have access to a bariatric surgeon on your contact list, or an ophthalmologist, so we’ve interviewed them for you! These interviews can be found in the upcoming book, Ingredients of Outliers in Medicine . In the coming weeks, we will be releasing each chapter individually with interviews from each specialist. Other interviewees for this series include, a student applying to medical school (helping you decide which school to choose), a fourth year medical student, a neurosurgeon, a psychiatrist, and a family practice physician.

We encourage you to not only check out the high-lighted article but also join us in our interviews with these professionals by checking out this book series- it was written with you in mind! We are excited for the future in medicine and send you our best wishes on this ambitious path!