If you don’t like the most basic problems faced by a specialty, you risk being miserable as a physician. Those who can’t handle the background work end up in administration or taking an exit for something else.

More important than the ability to embrace a specialty’s most basic problems is the ability to find joy in the process. For me, joy comes from engagement around some of pediatric’s most troubling problems. Connection and translation are the most important day-to-day elements of my work. I consider this as much my specialty as digestive health. My job and my work, as you may recall, are not necessarily the same thing.

When it comes to helping medical students, we focus on the least important elements of a specialty. We focus on features that are over-represented in quaternary center clinical rotations and idealized in the mind of dewey-eyed medical students.

It’s the background work of a specialty and our ability to find peace in the flow/process of that field that best defines our fit.

Everything else is window dressing.