I am going to be a family practice physician.
I have mixed feelings about this. I think I will make the best of it, and I can have a rewarding (and hopefully successful) career in family medicine. I can still do a lot of women’s health, and even possibly some obstetric care of sorts.
Anyway, here’s to the future.
Awww! Congrats! I absolutely love love love family physicians. Strangely I had never been exposed to family doctors until I moved to Fort Collins, CO. Apparently there is a big residency program here, so 9 out of 10 doctors in the area are family medicine practitioners, I swear. In terms of a holistic approach, it can’t be beat.
Best to you and the very lucky people who will be under your care!
Thanks!
I’m interested to hear more about how you arrived at this decision. And it’s nice to hear from you again!
Thanks! Maybe I’ll have more time to update my blog soon, when my intern year winds down a bit. And I hope your pregnancy is going well!
I discuss it a bit here: http://momstinfoilhat.wordpress.com/2012/11/10/breaking-the-silence/
As a general pathologist, (I do it all!) I feel so thankful that I get to see the whole patient, and not only parts. It makes me a better clinician – I look at things holistically – as was said above, and not with tunnel vision. I see SO many mistakes made – got a blog marinating about this – with our fields being so fractionated. It works well when we all work in concert, but unfortunately that doesn’t always happen.
We get teased by sub-specialty academicians. But really they are intimidated by what we do. I hear this from the emotionally intelligent ones first person. Because what we do is truly amazing.
Welcome to the trenches. Much love and well wishes. Here’s to wonder women:)
Thanks!
Well congrats at least on that! I know it can be a bummer when you think you were so set out to do one thing and it ends up something different from what you have always wanted. I have found FM to be really rewarding, every now and then I find my self still wanting that OB world but overall I am very happy. I really get to do a lot of OB and women’s health at my program, which makes doing inpatient medicine a little bit better! I hope you find the same! Best of luck!!
Sounds great!
Congratulations on knowing your path and getting to start on this next journey at last. You have written about how it is hard to do obstetric care as a family practice doctor in your area, and it sounds like it is really hard for you to give up that area of practice. But your patients will love you and what you can do for them, and life is long…we all end up in places we never expected or predicted, but that are surprisingly good. I hope that’s what happens for you!
Thank you! Life is long…I say that often!
Does this mean you had a successful match in family medicine somewhere? You’re going to be terrific!
Thanks, Rachel. I’m going to continue here at the hospital where I’m doing my internship.
Cool. I hope that wasn’t too sensitive of a question to ask; I couldn’t remember what you were doing this time.
I know I’m late to the party, but I just wanted to say “congrats” and “that’s awesome!” As the daughter of a former Family Medicine physician, I may be biased…but I’m happy for you and (at the risk of sounding weird) for your future patients. Good FM docs rule, and I’m sure you’ll be one of them!
welcome to the club
I do obstetrics and quite a lot of women’s health and love it.
Hi, just found your blog. I don’t quite remember the path – Evidence-Based Birth or Improving Birth or Birthing Beautiful Ideas – one of those kind of sites. I’m a family physician, finished residency in 1989. I do lots of low risk OB. I started medical school planning to go into OB-gyn. and then somewhere in 4th year realized just how much time they spend in ORs. And I was wavering, and my advisor, an OB, helped me make this decision, which I have never regretted.
and now, after skimming more and more, I am remembering that I am not able to do things now that I did 20 years ago in the same family medicine group, at the same hospital. Like: twins. vaginal breech births. (only 2, with a obstetrician standing by if needed, which he wasn’t). Now I can’t even do VBACS as a FP. But I figure what I do to prevent that primary c-section is even more important than attending VBACs.
And I think I will go and call a woman who used to be a nurse in my office, and I attended the VBAC birth of her twins 20 years ago.