Yesterday I was speaking to a friend of mine who will be entering medical school in the fall. When I asked him what specialties interested him, our conversation shifted towards a discussion of the relative advantages and disadvantages of the different medical specialties.
Why become a neurologist? Why become a dermatologist?
Presumably medical students - as any other consumer of goods or services - respond to market incentives. Certain specialties involve more patient contact, others are better compensated and still others have better qualities of life. In making their decision, medical students must weigh personal interests against debt loads, training times, expected financial rewards and quality of life.
Neurosurgeons, though well compensated, have lengthy residencies. Although they train for less time, neurologists are relatively poorly compensated and often participate in grueling call schedules. Simply on a financial basis, it is not surprising that medical students graduating with over $200,000 in debt gravitate towards higher-compensating specialties and avoid residencies in lower-compensating fields like family medicine and pediatrics.
As an outsider, it's easy to forget that both monetary and non-monetary incentives are highly likely to influence the medical specialty, region and city that a medical student selects.
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