To ask if you were a doctor (assuming you're not already)...

[TheTitOfTheIceberg]

...what would your speciality be?

I'd be torn between gynaecology to help the maximum number of women that I could (not least because we've been second class in so many areas of healthcare over the years) or endocrinology because it sounds fascinating and based on what little I know of it, it seems to be linked to so many other issues - it feels like we're still scratching the surface of what we know about hormones and their impact on various conditions.

(This is a very random musing - I have no medical connections at all, other than as a patient!)

In real life I am a paediatric nurse, so I would probably say paediatrician. Or maybe GP for a break from shifts/ wards. I have friends who are GPs, so I know it is very stressful and not a great work-life balance, but at least they get to sit down sometimes!

Dermatology fascinates me but I'd worry about people that I couldn't properly help - those long-term conditions which have no cure but simply have to be 'managed' - it must be quite dispiriting to see little improvement.
Or pathology, but I know someone who works in this and she finds it depressing.

Endocrinology. - just not enough ologists to go round and our UCLH consultant has done so much for my daughter over the years

Surgical Ophthalmologist.
Quick ops, almost instant improvement for patients, very little weekend/nights/on call once a consultant.
Also you get to play with lasers.

Palliative/end of life care. It's always fascinated me and having spent time visiting in a hospice and a nursing home it's the one area I would love to work in.

Intensivist! I am an an ICU nurse and in awe of them! One of the hardest, and underappreciated specialities in my opinion, and one that rarely gets any glory. Most I have met are really down to earth, funny, and genuinely nice people.

Dermatology. Mmmmmm scabby spotty flaky skin.

Tropical diseases. It sounds like it would be interesting and varied, and I imagine some of the symptoms would satisfy my need to look at gross things.

No doubt some optician will come along to cruelly disabuse me of this notion, but I always figured it was a very nice specialism.

Not much you can take home with you. Patients tend to find it less threatening and more fun than the dentist. Not too stressful with life or death situations on a daily basis. No general ick to deal with regularly (my friend is an endoscopy nurse...).

So long as your patients won't be Dyson with death

Boom boom OP 🤣🤣🤣

Quite a few of my friends are doctors and the paediatricians and obs/gynaes do not have a good work balance at all. One is an ophthalmologist who mostly does cataract surgery and works 9-5 Mon-Friday. She picked that speciality as there is very little in call work and apparently no emergencies; eye trauma can be bandaged up for a few days.

Sexual health, but I work in sexual health (in a public health sense, I’m not a clinician).

eye trauma can be bandaged up for a few days.
I literally have never seen any eye trauma being bandaged up for a few days.
There are just very few things that require an ophthalmologist to get out of bed at 3am in the morning- there are a few things though.

Oooh. I'd be an ophthalmologist. I developed a weird fascination with eyes after getting shingles last year (it was in the nerve surrounding my eye.)

Psychiatrist

Rheumatology, anaesthetics or obstetrics

Anaesthesiology/critical care (or anaesthetist/icu if you prefer).

Keeping people alive during and after surgery or trauma, seems to attract the smartest and most gifted docs.

I'm a GP and I love it. There's a lot of bad stuff about the job - spiralling workload, inappropriate work being dumped on GPs by other people, long hours (a standard working day for me is approximately 8am to 8pm, by the time I've done my admin) - but I love using my brain, meeting new people, and getting to solve a new mystery every 10 minutes.

If I hadn't done GP, I'd have become a psychiatrist. There's a lot of mental health in GP and I enjoy it, though it's emotionally demanding.

Trauma or NICU.

Been eyeing GEM for a while now...

ENT - it's the only doc I've never minded going to for appointments! 😂

I guess Maxillofacial because I’m a dentist already so just one more degree....and years and years training!
One of my friends has just made consultant. We started at dental school together at 18. We’re now 42!

A&E for me, even though I live a pretty ordinary life, I have to say I'm bloody brilliant in an emergency...

Neurologist or forensic pathology

Endocrinologist. I believe that women's diseases are woefully under diagnosed, under funded and women in general are deemed as hysterical by medics. I also believe that a huge number of women's diseases are caused by hormones.

Physiatrist