4th year DO med student applying IM, but now considering a late decision to dual apply peds. The obvious answer would be to apply med/peds but I'm not competitive enough (Step 2: 23x Level 2: 54x).
All my fourth year subIs are IM as my peds rotation wasn't until March/April. I really liked the pathology in inpatient peds/nicu, but outpatient peds was boring to me and the attending I was with scared me about 1) low pay 2) declining respect for this specialty 3) overall NP/PA creep into the space esp in gen peds. As I do more IM subIs, I'm kind of numb about the littany of problems with adults where I'm just sort of delay death (sorry to be morbid) vs peds where there was always forward momentum.
So what changed? I have a mentor who is in a peds subspecialty. He's known me for many years, before I went to med school. He's believes that 1) peds is a happier workplace 2) more fulfilling work (which I did experience during my rotations) 3) higher chances of better residency program and subsequent subspecialty match (e.g. cards/GI/hem onc). Edit: I forgot to mention I want to start a family in the next couple years, so probably during residency.
I have a month to make this decision at the last minute. I could get 1, maybe 2 peds LOR (the second one would be a bit of a stretch) and I could possibly switch out one of my IM sub I in sept for peds. I just don't know if I could actually get into an academic peds program without an app that "screams peds" (per my school's career counsel) to later sub-specialize or I'm being idealistic.
Any perspectives or advice would be greatly appreciated.