The last time we talked about medical careers and choices to make along that tough road to professionalism. We asked you to be honest with yourself when choosing the specialty of medicine for you. We talked about how you can self-examine your character and disposition to see what type of doctor you will become best. Today let’s turn to resources and available career advice that can help you move forward without making unfortunate errors.

The easiest thing to do nowadays of course is to go on the web and run a few professional tests. They can be found as student sources and are called medical specialty aptitude tests. These tests won’t come up with a single perfect result but they will rank a number of specialties according to your abilities. There are also articles and books that you can either download online or purchase at a good bookshop near you. When you have only limited choices to make (between two and three) it’s a good idea to read literature with straight-to-the-truth rundowns of different specialties – you may learn stuff you never heard of before. Of course there is practice and your internships so do ask many questions and keep observing.

You may also want to turn to a career advisor or your supervisor with whom you have worked for a period of time. If you make the right choice from the start it will make your career so much happier in the long run.