How can I Diagnose my career?
Choosing your medical specialty is a complex business. You have to combine in-depth knowledge of the various options available with clear understanding of what motivates and satisfies you. You have to take into account how specialties develop and how your needs may change over time. As well as this, you have to take into account real-world factors such as competition and regional availability.
If you are uncertain, it's hardly surprising! Here are a few tips (along with helpful resources) that should help you to tackle the process of making a choice in the most systematic way.
Survey your options
Start by making sure that you are aware of the landscape of medical careers. Various resources exist to give you an overview of the various specialties and sub-specialties. This will give you a better idea of what all the options are, rather than just relying on knowledge and impressions you gain by accident. Focus on the long-term possibilities of the various specialties to see what options might be open to you further on in your career. Make sure you even read about specialties that you are already starting to rule out. You never know, you may be mistaken.
Start to make a list of potentially interesting specialties. Be open-minded at this stage.
You can start by visiting Post Foundation School here at Career Diagnosis
Know your criteria
Be really clear about all the factors that are important to you in choosing a specialty. Factors that you might want to take into consideration are:
Your interests. What subjects do you find fascinating?
Your values and motivations. What makes some activities rewarding and others less rewarding?
Your skills and abilities. What are you good at and what do you want to develop?
Your personality. How do you prefer to work and what environments allow you to be yourself?
Your constraints. Do you have commitments that tie you to a particular region or work pattern?
In the Self Knowledge module of the on-line career development tool sort_it there are a number of exercises that may help you to identify, name and prioritise your most important career factors. It will also suggest specific relevant questions linked to these factors that may prove useful in the next stage.
Make a note of important questions and try to think of some of your own.
Investigate in depth
General information about specialties can only take you so far; you now need to gather information that is specifically relevant to your criteria. The best way to do this is to talk to people already working in their specialties. As well as the more detailed questions, you can ask good exploratory questions, e.g.:
- What attracted you to this specialty in the first place?
- What keeps you in this specialty?
- What are the disadvantages of this specialty?
- What sort of person does it take to succeed in this specialty?
- Can you give me an example which demonstrates how you use the core competencies of this specialty in a real life situation?
Collect and record your information so that you can easily compare different specialties against your criteria. It often happens that as you investigate in more depth, new criteria appear.
Evaluate your options
As you gather information you need to weigh up the various specialties you are considering against the criteria. Try to be consistent: apply all your criteria to each of the options. Remember, some factors are more important that others and should be given greater weight. You also need to take into account your realistic chances of getting a place in this specialty in a particular Unit of Application.
A good starting point is to search the BMJ Career Focus for any recent articles on choosing your specialty.
The Taking Decision module of sort_it has a number of evaluation exercises and techniques to help you with the decision-making process.
Review your evidence and take action
If you have conducted your research thoroughly, you should have gained a clear understanding of the qualities that will be assessed as part of the selection process.
The Specialty Person Specifications contain some useful indicators of the type of person that could perform well in these posts.
In order to prepare effectively for the competency-based elements of the selection, you will need to have ready examples of situations you have been in where you have demonstrated those competencies.
The Implementing & Self-Marketing module of sort_it contains general advice on applications and interviews. There are several specific resources for medical applications and interviews.