Attendings/residents: how did you choose radiology? Torn between neurology/neuroradiology

I'm a USMD M3 who has long been interested in neuroscience. Overall, I enjoyed my neurology clerkship, but it left me with concerns I didn't know about before. Additionally, I'm also torn between neurology and neuroradiology.

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Neurology (my rotation was 75% outpatient, 25% inpatient):

• I finished my neurology rotation and loved outpatient neurology - the variety of cases was super interesting, I liked how well many of the problems can be managed, the problem-solving aspects, and understanding the neuroanatomy and physiology (my favorite part).

• I did not like inpatient neurology. I didn't like rounding, and the common consults like AMS seemed so vague and I didn’t like seeing acute stroke patients. It was tiring, and at times I felt like nothing useful could be done - but I know every field has cases like that. I foresee myself being miserable doing that the rest of my life.

• I could see myself being happy doing outpatient, but my understanding of neurology residency is that it’s almost entirely inpatient work, with relatively little clinic time. I’ve also heard it is the toughest non-surgical residency and that seems intimidating. I don’t know how the typical inpatient/outpatient ratio is for most attendings.

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Radiology:

• On the other hand I also did a radiology elective and liked it a lot, especially neuroradiology (also body imaging and IR). Ofc the chill lifestyle is attractive, but mostly I liked appreciating the anatomy, identifying out the pathology, the likely diagnosis etc, and talking about it with the neurologists. I’m not yet sure whether I’m okay with minimal patient contact - I like the idea of being a patient’s doctor who they know and trust for years - but I like it more than inpatient neurology and less than outpatient.

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• I’d like to know how you choose radiology
• what other fields you were considering and how you decided against those
• if you are in neuroradiology - how did you choose this sub-field? Pros/cons?
• what attending life and salary is like

Thanks!

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source https://www.reddit.com/r/Radiology/comments/rlq96w/attendingsresidents_how_did_you_choose_radiology/