How I Chose Chest Medicine

April 28, 2014

Many of my colleagues knew from day one of internal medicine residency that they wanted to be a cardiologist or oncologist. That was not me. As an intern, I was so busy staying afloat that I did not think about a specialty or what type of medicine I wanted to practice. As the months passed, I started to recognize my strengths and when I was happiest. As sleep deprived and stressed as I was, I was happiest admitting and taking care of the complex and acutely ill patients who went to the ICU. The cases were initially overwhelming, but I eventually tackled them with organized thought processes and well-thought-out problem lists. Being able to do this gave me a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. I later realized this was an invaluable skill essential to dealing with the complicated patient cases in critical care medicine.

It wasn’t until late in my residency that I knew I wanted to pursue a career in pulmonary and critical medicine. I really enjoyed most of my rotations, and I didn’t want to specialize in a single area and give up a lot of the procedural skills I had cultivated. To me, critical care medicine was like pursing an expertise in all of medicine.

So, like many people, I chose chest medicine for the critical care portion. It is exciting, changes daily, and I learn every day. It is important to know, though, that the good attributes can also be bad. The exciting days are also the exhausting days. The patients are complex and have advanced diseases, which makes it very satisfying to help them—but also very challenging to realize how much is out of my control. 

Now that I am at the end of my training, the big surprise is how much I also love pulmonary medicine. It is so much more intellectually stimulating than I imagined when I applied for the field. While it may seem obvious, I never considered how much the inability to breathe well affects people’s day-to-day life. There are still many diseases without treatments, and these are undoubtedly frustrating, but there are many times I feel I have made a big difference in my patient’s quality of life, which is such a rewarding feeling.

Overall, in choosing my career path, I always went with where I was happiest and where I felt I fit best. I am very happy, satisfied, and excited to finish training and start my career in pulmonary and critical care medicine.

Corinne Tina Sheth, MD is a Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellow at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. She is a southern California native and attended medical school at UC Irvine School of Medicine, and completed her internal medicine residency at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.