Career Advisor's Background and Career Information

Background

Name: Niraj L. Sehgal, MD MPH
Career Advisor for: Internal Medicine
Title(s): Assistant Professor
Best way to contact (e-mail, phone?): nirajs@medicine.ucsf.edu or 415-476-0723 (office)
Undergraduate & Graduate Degrees/Institutions: BA, Washington University (St.Louis) MD, Rush University (Chicago) Residency, Stanford University Hospital & Clinics MPH, UC-Berkeley
Clinical Interests/Duties: Inpatient medicine and urgent care; Supervision and teaching for housestaff and students in both settings
Research Interests/Duties: patient safety, quality improvement, healthcare delivery in inpatient setting, multidisciplinary projects (with nursing, pharmacy, etc...)
Personal Notes or Comments: Very much enjoy working with and mentoring students, particularly those struggling to make difficult career choice decisions.

Career Information

1. What can students do in the 1st and 2nd years to explore and/or prepare for this career? Never too early to start learning about what a particular field offers. The challenge of making career decisions based on 4-8 week rotations is that your experience is largely impacted by the residents or attending you work with in that given block. If they inspire you, your impression of the field is natually impacted. If they don't, you're left asking whether it was the clinical field or just the exposure you received. Talk to people early on, scan a few of the major associations' websites (their professional development/career pages---American College of Physicians), and take advantage of the great resources within the med school and the department of medicine to get early mentoring.

2. What common variations exist in the length/content of residency programs for this career? Mostly all 3-yr training programs but many institutions (like UCSF) offer several tracks for consideration. These include traditional categorical programs, primary care programs, and others geared towards research-oriented careers.

3. What common variations exist in this career after training? One of the best attributes of internal medicine is the vast number of options available after training. One can specialize, go out into practice, remain in a teaching setting, do research, get involved in health policy, epidemiology, etc...

4. What is a typical work day for you (or someone else representative)?

5. What is the "culture" of this career?

6. How compatible is this career with raising a family? How is this different for men and women? With so many career options available within internal medicine, choosing a path that fosters a desired family life/balance can be achieved for both men and women. In addition, many of my colleagues have started with one type of job and transitioned to another (with different sets of responsibilities or simply going part-time) in order to achieve this compatability.

7. How important, individually, are each the following for admission to a competitive program:

a.Extra-curricular/volunteer work? yes
b. Research/publications? nice but not critical
c. Honors in third year? yes
d. AOA? a nice recognition
e. A sub-internship? yes
f. An externship?
g. (Other important elements to the application?) Demonstration of well rounded attributes

8. What are the most important qualities or character traits for a person in this field?

9. How competitive are the residency programs in this field? Matching in IM is not particularly competitive but matching at a top tier institution can be very competitive. This is a function of the large nubmer of IM positions available each year across the country (compared to Neurosurgery for instance).

10. How competitive is the job market after residency? Depends entirely on what type of job--as noted above, ten different internists may have ten very different job descriptions.

11. What programs would you consider to be in the 1st tier, 2nd tier, and 3rd tier?

12. What resources (web, books, etc, besides the AMA and AAMC sites) would you recommend for students interested in learning more about this field? -American College of Physicians website -Any other specialty-specific website of interest(e.g., Cardiology, Pulmonary, Hospital Medicine, etc...)