So, we're making our 4th year schedules and I've been getting to thinking about specialty interests.
One thing I'm a bit confused about in particular is the patient population in IM.
I had my medicine rotation a few months back and to my surprise, 80% of our floor were elderly patients in very bad health, hearing problems, dementia etc. I rarely connected with the patients, more often than not I was quite detached, and all in all I wasn't a fan. I expect a decent amount of elderly patients, but it seemed that almost all of the patients were elderly and most of them I could not talk to or properly interact with. Some were in such bad health, I just felt like we were fighting a losing battle. I was seriously considering IM before third year started, but this experience was enough for me to not want to do IM at all. I just did not enjoy the patient population. I def prefer seeing a wide age range, which IM did not have.
But before ruling it out, I just wanted to confirm, since I only experienced one hospital.
If I did internal medicine, would the majority of my patients be like this?
Or does the outpatient environment have more alert and healthy adults across a wider age range?
I'm happy caring for elderly patients, but I just didn't expect to just be caring for elderly patients...it felt a bit like geriatrics.
On the other hand, I loved surgery (took care of kids and adults, most of whom were recovering and getting better quick. I felt like we were actually making a different in their health, not just doing damage control like in IM) and am really enjoying pediatrics (also a wide age range, and here we are trying to prevent a lot of the diseases from the start).
Truth be told, I think I enjoy seeing kids, adults AND elderly patients. I just think I'd enjoy dealing with a wide age range. But, I don't like just seeing elderly patients, which is what IM felt like.
Regardless, I have a lot more rotations ahead, so I'm still figuring out what I might like. But I wanted to ask about IM before ruling it out completely.
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Mostly elderly patients in IM?
