Anaesthesiologist here.

I did EM for 6 months and hated it. This is because it just doesn't suit my personality.

To be good at EM you need to be: - Comfortable with being a kinda bad at everything and great at nothing - Comfortable with large amounts of uncertainty and risk and having to make decisions anyway - Being abused by drunk/mentally ill patients constantly - Being patronized by medical colleagues in other specialties

> Being patronised by medical colleagues in other specialties

Of which your post here is a prime example!

:thumbsup:

I hated EM as a student and for my first couple of rotations. I was streaming for surgery and couldn’t understand why Thr emergency department kept making such stupid admissions for us.

By the time I’d seen a couple thousand patients in the ED, I was much more comfortable and now intend to complete training there (also, I can do it part time given my other commitments). I’d prefer to be ok at most things (ie retain my general medical knowledge) and good at critical care but that’s more because I work so infrequently now, and have found that I value being a generalist... abuse of ED docs decisions be damned!

Thanks for sharing your experience! As a medical student, it is pretty difficult to get a decent feel for each specialty (as you know). I'm glad you were able to switch into something that fit you better. Have you ever considered anesthesia critical care? It seemed interesting from the little time I experienced it.

David Lee Roth becoming an EMT might be of interest to you >> https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffabernathy/2019/03/07/cross-...

Awesome! Thank you for sharing!

Well, RS certainly prepared him for how to deal with the patient dying.

I'm sure he tried to save my beloved RS, too.

I remember reading a Rolling Stone article years ago about neurosurgery residents (7 years) where one of the guys lost something like his first 17 patients on the table (because they're all cases like anyeurisms). He stuck with it and, one night, placed the clamp in a pool of blood to within a mm of perfection to close the bleed. Their training was: learn a procedure, do a procedure.

I am grateful that people like yourselves undergo the arduous process to become an MD.

Good luck and thanks!