INTPs as doctors?

[James Black]

I'm curious what others think of this. I'm looking into the medical field and wonder if it would be a good fit. I'm not big on saving people's lives, I'll admit, but dealing with people is something I've at least grown used to dealing with. The money is nice, and more importantly, what draws me to it the most, is that the profession has its fair share of challenges. I'm interested in a bit of surgery, but also definitely looking into the research portion of being a doctor. Thoughts, suggestions?

 

[Jaico]

There's research done on MBTI type and specialty, and it seems as if NTs are a better fit for specialties that can present challenges and opportunities for research. I believe that the top 3 NT specialties are neurology, pathology, and psychiatry - where the doctor is 'challenged' and has more complex cases than say, primary care physicians (actually, family medicine and general practice are ranked fairly low). It's an interesting study; I'm quite interested in medicine, and I'm thinking about pathology/psychiatry/neurology too...

 

[James Black]

I think I'd enjoy being a surgeon of some sorts, tbh. I'd really prefer the research and/or diagnosis parts to surgery, both involving more 'thinking', but I'd like, if somehow possible, 80% research or diagnosis, and 20% surgery -- I would look at surgery as more of a precise type of skill which would keep me happy about doing it, and it would be a slight change from the constant thinking that would come with just being a scientist/researcher/etc.

 

[anonymous]

As an INTP and current surgeon, I think I might have something to contribute to this conversation. There are a few things about surgery that make sense for my personality type, but I think in general, surgery for INTPs is not an ideal match.

The major selling point for surgery for an INTP is that the approach to patient care is very much logical. You deal with a smaller set of diagnostic possibilities, and mainly focus on the management plan. In fact, many times, the diagnosis is already known before a surgeon gets involved. The management is relatively regimented and usually follows logically, which is good for a rational personality type. This in contrast to primary care, which deals with a much larger set of diagnostic possibilities. In that field, you'd have to chase a bunch of possilibities and memorize a large amount of data. To exaggerate a bit, it's the difference between learning algebra vs memorizing the multiplication tables...

Surgery doesn't fit very well for several reasons. For one, there is a lot of hierarchy, and much respect is given to people based on their status rather than the correctness of their clinical decision making. People in surgery tend to be pretty strict in terms of punctuality, repetition, certain arbitrary ways of doing things, and are generally very results oriented people. ENTJ is probably the best fit for surgeons, if that gives you any idea. "Sometimes wrong, never in doubt" is a common description for surgeons. Surgeons tend to be very opinionated and not shy about expressing themselves. In summary, the problem with surgery for INTJ is mostly other surgeons, who tend to be ENTJ.

Surgery has opportunities for research but I think if you want to be a researcher, you should look elsewhere in medicine, unless you are into outcomes research. People in academic internal medicine often work just a few months of the year in clinical duties and the rest of the time on research. Most academic surgeons devote most of their time to surgery and tend to use whatever remaining time for research. Clearly there is a different emphasis in surgery when it comes to research.

Regarding psychiatry or neurology, those are fields I was also very interested in. Those are probably the subjects I enjoyed the most during the first two years of medical school, where most of the studying is done from books and not from patients. However, as someone who is both rational and tends to get bored very easily, I couldn't imagine spending 30 minutes talking to a depressed or crazy patient, or a patient who couldn't really speak coherently. I'd much rather spend 5 minutes seeing a patient to gather the key information, and spending the rest of the time in the operating room where I can work mostly on my own.

 

[Zero]

I can't handle blood or people, so as far as a medical field I wouldn't become a physician. On my strong inventory Radiology (a tech of some kind) came up as one of my top 3-5. You still have to deal with people and you're on your feet all day. I like the challenges when it comes to information and I even like working with the machines.

For some reason I think being a medical examiner would be fun, then I remember how death and that preservation shit smelled.

 

[Invoke Ninja's True Power]

what about the autopsy/ cadaver research area? Not that I am interested but some opinions could change my mind. I am interested in science in general and trying to figure out what area would be best for me. I like electromagnetics, genetics, chemistry, optics, some of the life sciences, medical, health and the human body/mind, some of the more advanced physics concepts, (plain ol' physics just seems boring to me) just to name a few areas but I like more of the conceptual type stuff. I can do math fairly well but I have yet to take Calculus and beyond. Maybe I will have a better perspective once I advance in the math area as well. In the meantime I am just gonna try to get as much information and ideas as I can for my future.

 

[Jaico]

Thanks for the insight, anonymous, and welcome to the forum! I think your advice is quite informative - would you be able to tell us a bit more about your experiences in medicine? If you don't mind, that is.

 

[Seducer of the Homeless]

Dr. Gregory House FTW!

 

[anonymous]

Thanks for the insight, anonymous, and welcome to the forum! I think your advice is quite informative - would you be able to tell us a bit more about your experiences in medicine? If you don't mind, that is.

What kinds of things would you like to know?

 

[Jaico]

Anything you have to say, really - training, environment, general thoughts, patients, bureaucracy, typologies of colleagues...really, anything at all. I'd just like to see an inside view from an INTP's perspective, since medicine is really an area of interest for me.

 

[Enne]

What kinds of things would you like to know?

What's your mindset like when you're in the operating theatre? Do you feel pressured to utilize your knowledge source in just the right way, or is it more of an automatic feeling of assessing the situation? When you're operating, do you keep, say, at the edge of your mind, a sort of mental map / mind image of the portion of the body you're working on relative to the other parts (like as a piece of an integrated system)?

I also wonder about your road there? What were your premedical studies like? Was admission to an MD programme a challenging / stressful process? Do you feel attached in some way to your patients, or is it easy to make and maintain a disconnect?

Sorry about all the questions. You can PM me if some of them are too personal / strange.

 

[anonymous]

Anything you have to say, really - training, environment, general thoughts, patients, bureaucracy, typologies of colleagues...really, anything at all. I'd just like to see an inside view from an INTP's perspective, since medicine is really an area of interest for me.

I'm in the US... I get a sense that many of the members here are from Europe. Anyway the training here is pretty mindless in medical school. You just have to memorize one thing after another. I majored in philosophy as an undergraduate so it was a particularly challenging adjustment. I really did not enjoy medical school much at all.

The patients can be rewarding when they behave like adults. Unfortunately, patients requiring surgery are often stressed out or in agonizing pain, which makes them difficult to deal with. Then there are patients who chronically need surgery because they refuse to control their blood pressure or blood sugar. One of the things I dislike about medicine is that I don't really get much intellectual stimulation from patients. Most times I feel like I have to oversimplify things. Not to sound arrogant but many times I wish I worked with people who could inspire me with their thoughts and ideas. Most times this is not the case. Doctors are at the top of the food chain in their work environment... most of your co-workers will have far less education and quite frankly, far less intellectual curiosity. Contrast that to working at Google where there are brilliant people everywhere bouncing off great ideas. Or a professor at a university who has other brilliant professors and students to share ideas with...

There is an agonizing amount of bureaucracy in medicine. I don't know what it's like overseas, but here in the US it's pretty ridiculous the amount of forms I need to fill out. There is a huge amount of grunt work in medicine, which made a lot of people more and more unhappy.

Colleagues... during medical school my classmates all were pretty damn accomplished and diverse. I don't know if it's because I got used to them, or if it's due to the constant mindless information we need to absorb, but I feel like they became less impressive over the years. I'm very rarely wowed by the brilliance of my colleagues, and I'm afraid to say I'm probably not very impressive to others either anymore. Maybe that's just my own perspective though.

Not to be a total downer... I think most in medicine tend to be pretty pessimistic about their field. It sure beats a desk job and it does force me to socialize, which is good for me. If left to my own devices I might never see sunlight. It's very cool to learn very practical things that can profoundly impact someone's life. It's easy to lose sight of that but once in a while I'm reminded how cool that is. I'm the type of person that wants to improve myself even if the process is pretty painful, so despite all my whining and pessimism, I still see the process as worthwhile.

 

[anonymous]

What's your mindset like when you're in the operating theatre? Do you feel pressured to utilize your knowledge source in just the right way, or is it more of an automatic feeling of assessing the situation? When you're operating, do you keep, say, at the edge of your mind, a sort of mental map / mind image of the portion of the body you're working on relative to the other parts (like as a piece of an integrated system)?

I also wonder about your road there? What were your premedical studies like? Was admission to an MD programme a challenging / stressful process? Do you feel attached in some way to your patients, or is it easy to make and maintain a disconnect?

Sorry about all the questions. You can PM me if some of them are too personal / strange.

I'm under the assumption that I can remain fairly anonymous so I'll write relatively freely. My mindset in the operating room... nothing too dramatic really. I don't plan out or visualize everything I'm going to do. I'm not much of a super genius or savant in that regard. I think most people tend to overestimate what surgeons really can do. Surgeons are just fairly intelligent but not overly brilliant people who work pretty hard and accomplish things mostly by practice and dedication.

I think, from what I read on these forums, that people tend to frame everything in terms of INTP, Architect, etc. I think it's a little much. My approach to the patient is probably very similar to an ENTJ or whatever. Although one thing that I'm probably more likely to be is bored of tedious cases a lot quicker. Maybe a hardcore INTJ might want to hammer through a difficult case but I tend to lose interest pretty quickly.

As to whether I connect with my patients... very rarely. I'm more sympathetic to younger people and to older women, and also to family members more than the patients themselves. I think people aged 18-65 don't really trigger much sympathy from me, who knows why. I mean I want to help them but I don't really have much emotion invested in them. I find it difficult to care much when I have to give bad news, but I can fake it enough to not raise any eyebrows with family members. I tend to view life and death rationally, probably overly-rationally. A lot of people wonder how I can be so matter of fact about certain things. For example when someone who is very sick dies, I tend to concern myself with dealing with the other patients who are actually alive and I can do something for, instead of ruminating on the dead patient. Some call that cold; I just don't see the point in expending energy on something that's already decided.

Like I said I don't know if all my views can be explained by the notion that I identify with INTP. Some tests say I'm INTJ. I could just be a cold heartless jerk for whatever reason. Who knows... hope that helps. lol

 

[Invoke Ninja's True Power]

better to focus on the living than the dead

 

[Oblivious]

Please tell me you are going into cybernetics.

 

[Zero]

Dr. Gregory House FTW!

I cannot believe that just happened.

 

[cuterebra]

I'm a third year veterinary student and I'm planning on doing a pathology residency after I graduate. In my opinion, pathology is the perfect specialty for an INTP--once you've figured out what's going on with a case (and it ceases to be interesting), you move onto the next one. I know there are some people who love following a patient--implementing a treatment regimen, follow up appointments, client education, etc.--but that sort of thing bores me to tears. As a pathologist, the only people I'll have to talk to will be other doctors, so I'll never have to try to explain complex disease processes so someone with a My Pet Goat reading level can understand it.

It's funny, when I first considered a career in medicine I thought surgery might be the way to go. Now that I'm starting to actually do surgery, it strikes me as rather tedious.

 

[Toad]

I see you majored in philosophy instead of a science. Do you think it was harder for you to become accepted into medical school because of that? Also, was the MCAT harder for you because of that?

 

[Regnasty]

I'm curious to hear your response to Toad's question about the MCAT. As a Chemistry major who's considering medical school, I spend a lot of time around pre-med students who are, as far as I can tell, very non-INTPish. They try to memorize organic chemistry, cram for tests, and generally don't care whether they comprehensively learn and understand a subject or can simply regurgitate the right information on an exam. It's very depressing, since as an INTP, I tend to learn just for the sake of it.

Anyway, my guess is that the MCAT wasn't harder, since you had to take all the prerequisite classes regardless of your major. Furthermore, as an INTP, you probably cared more for the process of learning than the others, which I imagine would make you better prepared for the exam. Thanks for all the insight--the idea of going into medicine is something I've struggled with for years.

 

[anonymous]

I think it was actually easier to get into medical school because of my major. For some silly reason, medical schools want people to be well-rounded (only to make them one-dimensional later). The admissions committee also like to brag to each other (in other schools) about how great and unique their class is. "Hey we have a former Olympic gymnast!" "Oh yeah well we have a former violinist from Julliard!" ...that sort of thing.

Philosophy majors traditionally had the highest acceptance rate to medical school. Nursing majors had the worst. Biology majors were one of the lowest also. Medical schools don't want boring cookie cutter students. Also, conventional wisdom says majoring in what you're most interested in helps people do better overall, for what it's worth. I don't really believe that btw... you can be interested in engineering but chances are, your grades will suck more in engineering than sociology.

The MCAT was probably the second hardest test I ever took. The hardest was the USMLE Step 1, which students take after the 2nd year of medical school. I don't think it was difficult because I was a philosophy major per se. I minored in a biological science and had all the pre-requisite courses. I think the test is just difficult for most people.

I think I was one of those memorize-everything premeds. Not because that's my learning style, but because I was forced to be that way. I'm not a chemistry major, and I don't find organic chemistry very interesting, yet it is required, so I just did what I had to do to jump through that hoop. I think the environment and situation someone is in has a big impact on how they behave. Medical school will force you to memorize a lot and also require you to be somewhat social. Sometimes there just isn't an underlying concept to things you learn in medical school, or you just don't have time to figure it out. Sometimes the quickest and least painful thing to do is blindly memorize. Obviously I don't have that approach to everything - I can't just memorize stuff in philosophy.

As far as what you specialize in, I think pathology might be a good fit. I personally hate pathology, and I didn't want to just stare at pink dots everyday. There are various motivations why people choose this or that, but I chose surgery because I wanted to balance myself with something more practical, with tangible results. I didn't want to just be a head in the clouds philosopher thinking about stuff that no one else cares about. I mean I enjoy that from time to time but I wanted something more in life than that. I find psych or neuro intellectually stimulating, but stimulating my intellect was not what I primarily wanted out of medicine (or else I probably would have gone to graduate school in philosophy). I can find stimulation from things I learn on my own, outside of the hospital. Others might not care about that and be perfectly happy with pathology, psychiatry, or neurology. Like I said, I try to avoid fitting neatly into any category, and I don't let my Myers-Briggs type define me. (Although it comes pretty close )

 

[cuterebra]

I found this study on the attractiveness of medical specialty by two letter temperament: http://www.gesher.org/Myers-Briggs/MBTI Chart and specialty.html

Not sure how valid it is, but I found it interesting.

 

[Waterstiller]

I think the environment and situation someone is in has a big impact on how they behave. Medical school will force you to memorize a lot and also require you to be somewhat social. Sometimes there just isn't an underlying concept to things you learn in medical school, or you just don't have time to figure it out. Sometimes the quickest and least painful thing to do is blindly memorize. Obviously I don't have that approach to everything - I can't just memorize stuff in philosophy.

Interesting. Thanks for your posts; they've helped boost my confidence quite a bit.

 

[alakazam]

I think it was actually easier to get into medical school because of my major. For some silly reason, medical schools want people to be well-rounded (only to make them one-dimensional later). The admissions committee also like to brag to each other (in other schools) about how great and unique their class is. "Hey we have a former Olympic gymnast!" "Oh yeah well we have a former violinist from Julliard!" ...that sort of thing.

Philosophy majors traditionally had the highest acceptance rate to medical school. Nursing majors had the worst. Biology majors were one of the lowest also. Medical schools don't want boring cookie cutter students. Also, conventional wisdom says majoring in what you're most interested in helps people do better overall, for what it's worth. I don't really believe that btw... you can be interested in engineering but chances are, your grades will suck more in engineering than sociology.

The MCAT was probably the second hardest test I ever took. The hardest was the USMLE Step 1, which students take after the 2nd year of medical school. I don't think it was difficult because I was a philosophy major per se. I minored in a biological science and had all the pre-requisite courses. I think the test is just difficult for most people.

I think I was one of those memorize-everything premeds. Not because that's my learning style, but because I was forced to be that way. I'm not a chemistry major, and I don't find organic chemistry very interesting, yet it is required, so I just did what I had to do to jump through that hoop. I think the environment and situation someone is in has a big impact on how they behave. Medical school will force you to memorize a lot and also require you to be somewhat social. Sometimes there just isn't an underlying concept to things you learn in medical school, or you just don't have time to figure it out. Sometimes the quickest and least painful thing to do is blindly memorize. Obviously I don't have that approach to everything - I can't just memorize stuff in philosophy.

As far as what you specialize in, I think pathology might be a good fit. I personally hate pathology, and I didn't want to just stare at pink dots everyday. There are various motivations why people choose this or that, but I chose surgery because I wanted to balance myself with something more practical, with tangible results. I didn't want to just be a head in the clouds philosopher thinking about stuff that no one else cares about. I mean I enjoy that from time to time but I wanted something more in life than that. I find psych or neuro intellectually stimulating, but stimulating my intellect was not what I primarily wanted out of medicine (or else I probably would have gone to graduate school in philosophy). I can find stimulation from things I learn on my own, outside of the hospital. Others might not care about that and be perfectly happy with pathology, psychiatry, or neurology. Like I said, I try to avoid fitting neatly into any category, and I don't let my Myers-Briggs type define me. (Although it comes pretty close )

You probably will never read this but i'll try nonetheless. I'm an italian med student also interested in surgery (or should I say that everything else does not interest me, apart for, maybe, rads and psych). Now that a few years have passed since your answer I want to ask you what are your thoughts on a career in surgery? Also, what surgeon are you (what specific specialty)?