Are you a medicine person or a surgery person? Which specialty?

When I shadowed a surgical team, half the day was spent on rounds and doing procedures with the patient being awake. They spent the other half doing operations in theatre. I was surprised by how much patient contact they got, but I guess it largely depends on your specialty or seniority?

Though I have no idea which I'd like to do yet...got to get accepted on a course first!

Let's all hope you're referring to being a surgeon there

Medicine.
I think I'd prefer my patients awake, although what surgeons do is amazing.

Or a more general question: which specialty are you most interested in at the moment and why?

Psychiatry, O&G

As amazing as surgery is i think i'd like to go into medicine. Probably paeds, gynae or obs. Then again, i do like cutting things open

I think Psychiatry is the only field that I can safely rule out at this point.

Were you mainly put off by psychology or was it another aspect that you're not partial to? Also do you know if psychiatry the specialty is rooted in neuro or if it's quite pseudosciency? I read an article (albeit American) which argued that neurology and psychiatry had a lot of overlap and they could be partially combined in some way, and that convinced me that psychiatry was quite sciency.

Yes. It was my experience of psychology that has put me off psychiatry and mental health.

Do you think your psychology experience will help when it comes to dealing with patients in terms of personality type and how they cope? This is the only aspect of psychology that interests me (different personalities etc.) so would you know what subheading that stuff comes under in psychology if I wanted to do some reading? Or even go so far as to recommend a book? I'm really wishing your reply isn't "that is ALL of psychology" lol

Well, 'coping' is quite a broad topic really which borrows from both clinical and health psychology (and can of course range from coping with chronic disease, diagnosis, side effects, self-management, terminality etc etc). Personality in itself is not a great predictor of coping, but various cognitive models are used instead.

Any health psych text will cover the basics of patient coping.

Thanks for that. Health psych seemed a bit broad at first but a quick skim shows it's what I was looking for. I think it would be quite useful for GPs in particular to know about this stuff.

I suppose it gives you an idea of the kind of questions you should be asking when trying to get to the bottom of something like a patient not adhering correctly to medical advice.