Question

Prompt

Imagine you are a career advisor on a college campus. A student comes into your office and would like information and advice on future careers in the medical field. You ask what interests this student specifically and they reveal they want to treat patients with either skeletal or muscular issues.

Question

What would you tell this student? What options could you provide? What information could you give that may help the student decide? Tell me how you would compare and contrast the different medical specialists for your advisee.

Response

Hi,

I think there are three separate things you have to decide on when looking into musculoskeletal fields:

First, is whether you want to treat acute injuries or chronic and recurring issues. That's going to determine how long you see and get to know your patients. Patients with acute injuries, such as a bone contusion or ankle sprain, will only need treatment for a brief period of time. For those patients, so you would see them for an intense, but short-lived duration, before they graduate and you meet a new patient. While with patients undergoing chronic illnesses, you would need to see them intermittently over a longer period of time to manage symptoms and check-in on their progress. Something you have to decide on is whether you enjoy cultivating long-term acquaintanceships, or whether you like meeting new patients and treating something fresh every week.

Second, is whether you want to work to with your hands. With certain professions, such as surgery and physical therapy, you will be working with your hands to diagnose or make adjustments to the patient's body. And then there are professions where you don't have to use your hands at all, such as rheumatology, where you would be mostly diagnosing and prescribing medicine for chronic conditions.

And third, is whether you want to work with original or repetitive issues. Professions where you are working directly on a patient's body will have more originality as all bodies are slightly different and have unique challenges. While with a more specialist profession, such as podiatry, many of your patients will be coming in with one of a smaller subset of potential issues. The less you specialize, the more likely it is that you will have a higher variety of issues to treat.

It's less important to decide on treating muscles vs. bones, or which body part to focus on, as there is a lot of overlap between those things. Rather, focus on what afflictions you would like to treat and how you would like to go about treating them. Deciding on the above three questions will help you narrow in on area of study you will enjoy post-college.