Truth Be Told | Happiness — a primary goal

We’ve all been faintly curious about our doctors’ credentials, but have you ever wondered what their personal statements for medical school looked like?

Barring Dr. House, I’m sure you could imagine most of them having phrases like “can hear high blood pressure from a mile away,” “ended hunger in a third-world country” and “can stop a bullet with the power of pure empathy” — all qualities you would want to have at your bedside in a crisis or when your child needs a great smile to blunt the point of a needlestick.

But how would you feel if that personal statement said something like “don’t want much patient contact” or “want to take regular vacations?”

The number of students going into subspecialties instead of primary-care fields may be an indication of a shift in the importance of lifestyle in today’s culture, but they shouldn’t be at fault for that.

I bring up the personal statement because we’ve all written one, and we have the same goal in mind — to show ourselves in the best light. In the same way that many students enter college with undecided majors, the majority of medical students don’t know exactly what specialty they want to go into. So it helps to paint a picture of themselves in the present and future as the archetype of the word “doctor,” which for most people is a primary-care practitioner. It also wouldn’t help to show a narrow-mindedness to the admissions committee before being exposed to what’s out there. So, many and wide are the applications that are written as if the prompt was, “What kind of doctor would Jesus be?”

That ambiguity vanishes on match day, when fourth-years find out where they will be starting residency training.

Here at Penn, a peculiar thing happened on match day last month — 10 percent fewer students placed into primary-care specialties than in each of the previous two years, while a huge number entered into uber-competitive subspecialties.

So many, in fact, that School of Medicine Associate Dean for Student Affairs Jon Morris was anxious during application season.

“We in student affairs were concerned about the large number of students applying to competitive specialties,” he said. “We were obviously elated, as essentially 100 percent matched in those specialties — due not only to aggressive counseling from people in student affairs like [director] Barbara Wagner, but huge support from the departments.”

The interesting thing to note is that these competitive specialties — such as radiology, dermatology and ophthalmology — are also deemed “lifestyle specialties,” meaning they afford more control over one’s time outside the hospital. Along with changes in work hours and maternity policies, this seems to signify a trend throughout the workforce — that life outside of work is a major factor in career choices. But does this support for students going into such specialties detract from support for students from going into primary care?

Though he is proud to be part of such a successful class and recognizes that people go into specialties for their own reasons, Nick Shungu — a fourth-year going into primary care — said that Penn could do more.

“There is a general culture that undervalues family medicine at Penn,” he said in an email. “I’ve been frustrated that the excellent family physicians at Penn don’t seem to get the same respect and recognition that physicians get in other departments.”

Explanations for what specialties the class matched into can range from mentorship to economics to the type of admitted students and stretch ad nauseam. But my point is that it doesn’t matter. We can lament the shortage of primary-care doctors, but the fact remains that more people are choosing to go into certain specialties for personal reasons rather than expectations.

Ideally, exposure and support for specialties should be equal across the board. Beyond that, if those reasons make them happier, then that specialty is a lifestyle specialty too. White coats come in different shades, and no one should dissuade future doctors from choosing career paths that make them happy.

Mark Attiah is a first-year medical student from Dallas, Texas. His email address is attiah@theDP.com. Truth Be Told appears every other Thursday.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.