I think I made a mistake
All through med school, I was 100% OBGYN-bound. But I had so many people telling me not to do it—including an OB mentor who genuinely seemed frustrated with the specialty and told me she wouldn't choose it again.
Then I had a really bad Sub-I experience that completely messed with my head. I started questioning everything and listening to everyone else's opinions instead of my own. People talked about the lifestyle, the lawsuits, the burnout, the difficult patients... eventually I convinced myself they were right.
I ended up dual applying OB and EM. I wanted to take a year off, I was having really what I now think was imposter syndrome and didn't feel in the right headspace to make any big life decisions, but my med school would not let me. I matched EM—which was my choice at the time—and now I'm an intern.
The problem is I can't stop thinking about OB.
Every time I'm in the hospital, I find myself wishing I were upstairs delivering babies instead of in the ED. I miss the OR. I miss procedures that lead to definitive outcomes. I miss the idea of following patients through pregnancy and being the specialist they came to see, instead of constantly triaging and stabilizing before someone else takes over.
I chose EM because I wanted the better work-life balance, shift work, and flexibility. I loved my EM sub-is as a med student but I now think as a med student my experience was overly curated, I was pulled to all the fun traumas, interesting tox cases, rescucistatiops and did a lot more procedures than I'm finding I get to do now, or even that my seniors get to do. I think I thought it was going to be like "surgery-lite." I loved my surgery rotation but knew I didn't want to do general surgery. The biggest deciding factor between EM and OB was I was terrified of ending up as an OB generalist forever if I didn't match into my dream fellowship which is one of the more competitive ones. EM felt like the "safer" choice with a better lifestyle.
But now I'm wondering if I made a decision based on fear instead of what I actually wanted.
Has anyone else switched from EM to OB (or vice versa)? Or realized early in residency that they chose the wrong specialty? Did the feeling go away, or did you end up switching?
I'm only at the beginning of intern year, and I honestly don't know if this is just normal adjustment or if I'm mourning the specialty I should have chosen. I love the people in EM, my coresidents, attendings, the nurses. I feel at home and a sense of belonging I did not feel in OB but the work doesn't inspire me. I dread having to go in every day and it's only been 4 weeks since I finished orientation. I'm just not excited about it and thinking of doing a whole career of this makes me nauseous. I feel incredibly guilty for feeling this, especially because so many people went out their way to make EM a possibility for me later in the application cycle.