Internist Job Description

My Path to Internal Medicine

Hi, I'm an internal medicine physician, and I work in primary care. The path I took to get here to become a physician includes going to a college and taking the prerequisites for medical school and graduating with a bachelor's. Then taking the MCAT exam, then applying for medical school. After medical school, which is typically four years, then applying for residency programs in the specialty of your choice. Mine was internal medicine, and the internal medicine residency program is three years. After that, you can apply for fellowships if you want to do additional training or sub-specialized, or like me, you can go ahead and apply for jobs in internal medicine or primary care. It is a really long road, but if you are interested in medicine and you're passionate about it, it is absolutely worth it.

If You’re Interested in Medicine

I would highly recommend shadowing someone in the medical field. There are so many different specialties and different lifestyles that go with those specialties. So, asking to shadow someone in the hospital or volunteering in a hospital versus shadowing someone in a clinic who has more traditional work hours can be really helpful for you to decide if that's the right path for you.

Once you decide, "Okay, maybe the medical field is what I want to do," then I would pursue extracurriculars within the medical field. For example, what I did was I became an EMT and volunteered for certain events as an EMT to experience that aspect of medicine.

I also worked as an aide for developmentally disabled adults and helped them with their activities of daily living to really experience what that was like. Those things helped me decide, yes, this is the field I want to go into. It also, of course, can help with your medical school applications to show your interest.

Pros of Internal Medicine

The pro is definitely the relationships that you get to have, not just with your colleagues and staff, but definitely with your patients. You get the honor of following them throughout their lives and through their life's ups and downs and being that person that they come to for medical advice and treatment.

The other pro is that for some primary care roles, like the one that I'm in, your hours are really during a regular workday. So for myself, I'm not on call during the nighttime, I don't have to wear a pager, and I don't have to run to the hospital. My primary care role is really just in the clinic, and that can be a big pro, especially with a family and young ones.

Cons of Internal Medicine

The largest con is that if you're not efficient with your time, it will be really, really hard. What I mean by that is there is so much to do every day—emails, lab tests, x-rays, seeing the patients, writing the notes, calling your patients back—there is so much to do. You really need to maximize your time and find out how you can be the most efficient for your day, however it works for you.

How I Manage My Time

For me, that means getting up really early and being mindful of my own wellness and the wellness of my family as the first priority.

Making sure that I try to eat healthy, exercise regularly, get good sleep, have strong social connections—all the things that we tell our patients to do are really important for you if you're a primary care physician so that you can sustain your wellness during this incredibly busy but meaningful career.