Choice

The topic that brought up the roar in the meeting was an old one: Some specialities are piled up with trainees while the others hardly have any.

Don't be mistaken. Most of us agree to respect the free choice of candidates, but we have to face and tackle the resulting skew in the workload. Of course I am always puzzled why graduates and trainees often rush to the same specialty or sub-specialty at a time. Nonetheless, most people also buy the same stock at around the same time - if not, how could there be any bubble ?

For the new generation doctors, however, the eternal question remains: What criteria should we based on when choosing a specialty ?

"Follow your heart (or interest)." Most of us would say, while pretending to be neutral.

But no. At least that's not the only important thing to consider. Otherwise many would choose to do nothing but eat, drink, and be happy. I have even more objection if the so-called interest is not actually in the particular subject, but for the naive reason that there is a great prospect of promotion (who could tell what the world would be three or five years later ?), or that many of your peers pick the same thing - so that you would not feel lonely.

For that very last reason, just think of the old Chinese saying: 相見好，同住難。