Why I chose Geriatrics/ why is it rewarding?

Having just talked about why geriatrics is unpopular I thought it worth talking about why I went against the grain and chose it as my specialty.

Briefly, my goal in life has always been to leave this Earth a little better for my passing. The way I've chosen to do that is through medicine, because it's rewarding and enables me to comfortably provide for myself and my family as I had always hoped.

I chose geriatrics because I found it the most rewarding of any area of medicine.

It's a field I think is actually quite easy, once you understand the underlying principles.

Once you understand the goals it is also very satisfying. I don't start my day thinking "today I'm going to save someone's life!" although I might. I always know that I'm going to make someone's life better. It might be something as simple as making someone continent again. Imagine your quality of life if you were incontinent, and how that would change. Then imagine being able to bring that back. It might not even be the patient that I make better, for example by simply explaining the diagnosis of dementia I have seen a wife burst into tears with relief that there was a reason for her husbands increasingly odd behaviour. It might be just letting people know they can choose the goal of therapy, returning control of their destiny to them and not aging or their disease
Because of that recognition of underlying factors in geriatrics that I wrote about in an earlier post, I feel that where appropriate I can often not just return my patients to their state of health before they became unwell but actually improve their health. Not many of my colleagues can claim that.

Its rewarding obviously financially, and I have a secure career for as long as I chose to pursue it. That means I have financial security, which to me is far more important than the possibility of making massive riches, with the possibility of bankruptcy.

There is a shortage of geriatricians, so I know that its not just a case of "If I don't do it someone else will" I'm actually adding not replacing the pool of geriatricians.

I can't say I specifically like old people, but I do like people - some of them happen to be old.

As a relatively new field of medicine, there is more scope for research and career advancement. Call me lazy, but the thought of working 20 years to finally attain the professorship of another specialty seems excessive to me.

It's a field where teams are paramount, and I like working with a team. Because of this there is far more to geriatrics than just the medicine - you need to build skills in teamwork, management both of individuals and services, psychology of same.

All these are my personal reasons for finding geriatrics satisfying, but surveys have shown that overall geriatricians are the most satisfied of all medical fields. DOn't believe me? I direct you to
Physician Career Satisfaction Across Specialties

J. Paul Leigh, PhD; Richard L. Kravitz, MD, MSPH; Mike Schembri, MS; Steven J. Samuels, PhD; Shanaz Mobley, BS

Arch Intern Med. 2002;162:1577-1584.