Medical Murmurs Podcast

Family and Community Medicine Physician and Associate Professor at Penn, Dr. Judy Chertok in Ep 12 of Medical Murmurs Podcast, Medical Student Edition. Dr. Chertok talks about the richness of relationships in Family Practice, and how that drew her to the specialty. She was interested in many more specialized areas during medical school, but ultimately wanted the variety and flexibility that Family Medicine offered. 

“I think in family medicine you have to be comfortable with ambiguity. You have to be comfortable, not necessarily knowing everything at that moment, being comfortable looking things up, being comfortable asking questions of colleagues, of specialists,of all kinds of people. And I think you have to really thrive on the variety and the unpredictability. And other than that, the qualities of a great family doctor I think are interpersonal skills. I think at the end of the day, much of what we do does come down to interpersonal skills.”

“When we look at applicants, we are really interested in people who have a commitment to service. . . .people who have had those experiences, people who've worked in free clinics or had other sorts of service oriented things. And so I think as a medical student, if you're interested in primary care, getting involved in those primary care experiences during medical school and first of all try it on for size, making sure that's something that you like.”