Last Updated on July 28, 2023
A general practice doctor has the least amount of requirements for any medical doctor. While these doctors do still have four years of medical school and one to two years of residency after completing four years of undergraduate education, this is the minimum amount of education any medical doctor must undergo.
Pediatrics
A pediatrician is a general practice doctor for infants, children and adolescents, ages 0 to 17. Similar to a general practice doctor for adults, pediatricians go through eight years of education before beginning their residency, which lasts three years. After this, they are eligible to practice pediatrics.
Podiatry
While not a medical doctor, a podiatrist is technically a doctor and receives the designation DPM, or doctor of podiatry medicine. These doctors, which treat the feet, ankles and lower legs, must complete an undergraduate program and a four-year podiatric medicine program before beginning their one- to three-year residency.
General Practitioners
General practitioners are primary family doctors who perform checkups with adults and children. They also offer generic advice to patients and sometimes refer them to specialized doctors should a serious illness occur.
Medical Doctors
Medical doctors usually specialize in a specific discipline to offer patients more detailed assistance than a general practitioner. For example, an oncologist works primarily with cancer patients, while a gynecologist deals primarily with women’s health.
Pros and Cons of General Practitioners
General practitioners often have a thorough medical history of the family and can accurately assess the correct illnesses based on this knowledge. They also provide the stability of having a primary doctor to visit when emergencies arise. A disadvantage is that they may not offer specialized care to patients.
Pros and Cons of Medical Doctors
For patients whose specific illnesses cannot always be treated by general practitioners, they can visit a medical doctor. A disadvantage is that medical doctors may not have the patients’ medical histories readily available.
Easiest Doctor To Become With High Salary
The 6 least competitive medical specialties are:
- Family Medicine
- Pediatrics
- Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
- Psychiatry
- Anesthesiology
- Emergency Medicine
Getting into any residency program, regardless of the specialty, is no easy task. It requires completing 4 years of medical school, taking USMLE Step 1, writing a personal statement, doing interviews, and several other steps that are not to be taken lightly. That being said, your life becomes much easier if you apply to a less competitive specialty.
If your specialty is not considered as competitive, this doesn’t make you a good or bad doctor. It’s just the facts, without any judgment, so please no butt-hurt comments.
We’ll be using the same methods from our previous video on the top 5 most competitive specialties. We’re taking into account the match rate, average Step 1 score, Step 2CK score, number of publications, percentage of matriculants who are AOA, and the percentage from a top 40 NIH funded medical school.
The following 6 medical specialties are those that ranked lowest, and are therefore the easiest to match into, relatively speaking. Check out the data for yourself in the spreadsheet with all the calculations.
1 | Family Medicine (15 points)
Family medicine is by far the least competitive specialty to match into, scoring only 15 points in our dataset, with the runner up at 27 points.
Family medicine is the specialty devoted to the comprehensive medical treatment of patients across all ages. Think of them as the first-line defense when it comes to maintaining health. Family med doctors are central to routine checkups, preventive care, health-risk assessments, immunization, screening tests, and acting as the coordination hub to manage the patient’s big picture treatment across several specialties. While less common, some family medicine doctors also deliver babies and provide prenatal care to pregnant women, which is now more commonly performed by OB-GYN doctors.
Family medicine is a foundational specialty to medicine, with nearly one out of every four office visits being made to family med physicians — that’s 208 million office visits each year, with the next closest specialty at 83 million visits. They’re also the ones doing most of the heavy lifting in treating America’s underserved and rural populations.
After completing medical school, you must complete either a 3 or 4-year family medicine residency. If you’d like to specialize, there are multiple fellowship options to choose from, including geriatric medicine, sports medicine, sleep medicine, hospital medicine, and hospice and palliative care.
In terms of lifestyle, family physicians have predictable hours without unexpected calls in the middle of the night. In terms of compensation, however, they’re toward the bottom, making on average $231,000 per year.
2 | Pediatrics (27 points)
Placing second is pediatrics, the branch of medicine involving the medical care of infants, children, and adolescents. Think of it as the equivalent of internal medicine, but for patients who aren’t adults. Just like internal medicine, peds is a 3-year residency. And just like internal medicine, there are dozens of subspecialties to choose from through fellowship training, like pediatric cardiology, emergency medicine, nephrology, oncology, infectious disease, and many more.
Working with kids is a mixed bag. On one hand, it’s incredibly gratifying to help children in need. On the other hand, it can be tremendously disheartening to care for a child with cancer or another terminal illness. As a pediatrician, you’ll essentially have two patients — the child and their parents, and you’ll quickly become well versed in handling upset or crying babies as well as highly neurotic parents. As a college student and first-year medical student, I was aiming for pediatric gastroenterology, but after working in the department for a few months, I realized working with kids and their parents every day wasn’t a challenge I was excited to take for the rest of my life.
In terms of lifestyle, pediatrics is so broad and varied that you can be anywhere on the spectrum. On average, however, pediatricians are one of the lowest compensated physicians, making on average $225,000 per year.
3 | Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation (28 points)
Physical medicine and rehabilitation, or PM&R for short, and also called physiatry, is the specialty focused on restoring functional ability, reducing pain, and enhancing the quality of life for individuals with physical impairments or disabilities.
PM&R doctors use non-surgical methods to treat conditions such as spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, stroke, limb amputation, chronic pain, and a variety of sports injuries and musculoskeletal disorders. When I visited the PM&R clinic as a medical student, we saw several cerebral palsy patients as well. While it may be easier to get into PM&R residency, I would consider the specialty anything but easy. Dealing with this sort of patient population day after day can be highly taxing and discouraging without high degrees of patience, compassion, and optimism.
Treatment modalities, of course, include medication, but also physical modalities such as heat, cold, ultrasound, or electrical stimulation. PM&R doctors also make use of adaptive equipment and devices such as braces, artificial limbs, and wheelchairs, and also perform spine and joint injections, often under fluoroscopic or ultrasonic guidance.
Including intern year, PM&R residency is a total of 4 years. If you’d like to subspecialize further, you can complete a fellowship in musculoskeletal & spine, stroke, multiple sclerosis, neurorehabilitation, electrodiagnostic medicine, cancer rehabilitation, or occupational and environmental medicine.
As for lifestyle, PM&R doctors have predictable hours, no crazy calls, and make mid-range physician salaries at an average of $306,000 per year.
