You'd think that with an art history minor I would be more interested in a field as visual as radiology...but instead just thinking about a future as a radiologist helps me better understand the phrase "you could not pay me enough to do that." And what exactly is the payment in question?!? Apparently the median income of a radiologist in the United States is $417,000...and that's for working reasonable hours.
I actually enjoyed most of my radiology rotation, lots of lectures from good teachers that helped tie together a lot of knowledge. Radiologists are excellent at coming up with a differential diagnosis and knowing how to rule out worse case scenarios. But you basically never interact with patients, sit in a dark room all day, and have to actually understand physics which was never really my thing. Interventional Radiology is somewhat of an exception in that it's an awesome, awesome, incredibly amazing field and I think it could be really cool to stick catheters in people and fix all sorts of problems...if only you didn't have to be a radiologist first. Radiology is hugely important in so much of modern medicine and the field is improving all the time. The new technology is staggering...fMRI, PET Scans, it's only going to get better. I now feel more confident reading chest X-rays, and even CT scans, myself...I'm just glad that in the future I can work with skilled radiologists and focus on other areas of medicine.
And now for something completely different. After a whole month spent staring at images from million dollar machines, it's off to Kenya where you're probably lucky to get a chest X-ray. It's going to be a new, crazy adventure and I can't wait!
