This is very inspirational. I'm applying to emergency medicine residency this year and love to see stories about how much people enjoy it. I'm curious what skills cross over from CEO to EM physician. Leadership and teamwork for sure.
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
Of which your post here is a prime example!
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!
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!