If only I had this flowchart when I was a first-year medical student! I too have always felt that emergency physicians have a little baseline crazy in them to be happy and successful in the specialty.

This diagram has been floating around the web for years now, and I wanted to share with you. It’s a humorous (partly because there’s some truth to it) decision tree on how to choose your medical specialty. Did you decide upon the right field?

 

I use this in some of my medical school/ EM Interest Group talks just to break the ice. We talk about stereotypes and how you don’t necessary have to fit into them. For instance, I’d rather be a couch potato than scale mountains and swim with sharks. Feel free to use, if you advise medical students!

Michelle Lin, MD

Michelle Lin, MD

ALiEM Founder and CEO
Professor and Digital Innovation Lab Director
Department of Emergency Medicine
University of California, San Francisco
Michelle Lin, MD

@M_Lin

Professor of Emerg Med at UCSF-Zuckerberg SF General. ALiEM Founder @aliemteam #PostitPearls at https://t.co/50EapJORCa Bio: https://t.co/7v7cgJqNEn
Michelle Lin, MD