Why you should not go to medical school — a gleefully biased rant
In the few years since I’ve graduated from medical
school, there has been enough time to go back to medical practice in
some form, but I haven’t and don’t intend to, so quit yer askin’,
dammit. But of course, people keep on asking. Their
comments range from the curious — “Why don’t you practice?” — to the
idealistic — “But medicine is such a wonderful profession!” — to the
almost hostile — “Don’t you like helping people?” Since
it’s fairly certain that I will continue to be posed this question for
the rest of my natural existence, I figured that instead of launching
into my 15-minute polemic on the State of Medicine each time, which
could definitely end up cutting into my time sitting in
traffic, I could just write it up and give them the URL. And
so now, unfettered by my prior obligations as an unbiased pre-med
advisor, here are the myriad reasons why you should not enter the
medical profession and the one reason you should enter it. I have
assiduously gone through these arguments and expunged any hint of
evenhandedness, saving you time hunting for them. And here
they are:
You will lose all the friends you had before medicine.
No foolin’. You’ll be so caught up with taking classes, studying
for exams, doing ward rotations, taking care of too many patients as a
resident, trying to squeeze in a meal or an extra hour of sleep, that
your entire life pre-medicine will be relegated to some nether,
dust-gathering corner of your mind. Docs and med students don’t
make it to their college reunions because who can take a whole weekend
off? Unthinkable. And so those old friends will simply
drift away because of said temporal and physical restrictions and be
replaced by your medical compadres, whom you have no choice but to see
every day. Which brings us to…
You will have difficulty sustaining a relationship and will
probably break up with or divorce your current significant other during
training. For the same reasons enumerated above, you
just won’t have time for quality time, kid. Any time you have
will be spent catching up on that microbiology lecture, cramming for
the Boards, getting some sleep after overnight call and just doing the
basic housekeeping of keeping a Homo sapiens medicus upright
and functioning. When it’s a choice between having a meal/getting
some actual sleep after being up for 36 hrs vs. spending quality time
with your sig-o, which one wins, buddy? I know he/she’s great and
all, but a relationship is a luxury that your pared-down, elemental,
bottom-of-the-Maslow-pyramid existence won’t be able to
afford. Unless you’ve found some total saint who’s willing to
care for your burned-out carapace every day for 6-8 years without
complaint or expectation of immediate reward (and yes, these people do
exist, and yes, they will feel massively entitled after the 8 years
because of the enormous sacrifice they’ve put in, etc etc).
You will spend the best years of your life as a sleep-deprived, underpaid slave.
I will state here without proof that the years between 22 and 35,
being a time of good health, taut skin, generally idealistic
worldview, firm buttocks, trim physique, ability to legally
acquire intoxicating substances, having the income to acquire such
substances, high liver capacity for processing said substances, and
optimal sexual function, are the Best Years of Your
Life. And if you enter the medical profession during this golden
interval, you will run around like a headless chicken trying to appease
various superiors (in the guise of professor, intern, resident, chief
resident, attending and department head, depending on your phase of
devolution) all the while skipping sleep every fourth day or so
and getting paid about minimum wage ($35k-$45k/yr for 80-100 hrs/wk of
work) or paying through the nose (med school costing about $40k/yr) the
whole while. Granted, any job these days involves hierarchy and
superiors, but none of them keep you in such penury for so long.
Speaking of penury…
You will get yourself a job of dubious remuneration and high liability exposure.
For the amount of training you put in and the amount of blood, sweat
and tears medicine extracts from you (and I’m not being metaphorical
here), you should be getting paid an absurd amount of money as soon as
you finish residency. I mean, you’re in your mid-thirties.
You put in 4 years of med school, and at least 4 years of residency (up
to 8 if you’re a surgeon). You even did a fellowship and got paid
a pittance while doing that. And for all the good you’re doing
humanity — you are healing people, for godssake — you
should get paid more than some investment banker soullessly shifting
around spreadsheet numbers, some lawyer defending a tobacco company or
some consultant maximizing a client’s shareholder value.
Right? Wrong. For the same time spent out of college, your I-banking, lawyering and consulting buddies are making 2-5 times
as much as you are. At my tenth college
reunion, friends who had gone into finance were near
retirement and talking about their 10-acre parcel in Aspen, while
80% of my doctor classmates were still in residency, with an
average debt of $100,000 and a salary of $40,000.
But wait, we’re not done yet. Who amongst these professionals
has to insure himself against the potential wrath of his own
clients? The doctors, of course. Average annual
liability premiums these days are around $30,000. That goes
up to $80,000 for an obstetrician-gynecologist (who remains liable for
any baby s/he delivers until said infant turns 18) and into
the six-digit realm for neurosurgeons. Atul Gawande
wrote a dynamite article about docs’ compensation in a recent (May 4,
2005) issue of The New Yorker entitled Piecework (http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050404fa_fact) — check it out.
You will endanger your health and overall well-being.
The medical profession is bad for you. Just ask any current
doctor or med student. You will eat irregularly, eat poorly when
you do get the irregular meal (unless it’s a drug-company
sponsored meal — god bless their generous hearts and bottomless
pockets), have way too much cortisol circulating in your system from
all the stress you experience, have a compromised immune system because
of all the cortisol in your blood, get sick more often because of the
compromised immune system (and the perpetual exposure to disease
– it’s a hospital, surprise), and be perennially
sleep-deprived. If your residency is four years long, on average
you will spend one of those years without any sleep. A whole year of no sleep. Do you get that? This is as bad for you as it is for patients (you’ve heard of Libby’s Law, right? Check out http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/health/features/n_9426/).
My good friend and college classmate James — a serious contender for
the title of Nicest Guy on Earth – had a severe
car accident one morning on the way to the hospital because he fell
asleep behind the wheel. Luckily, his airbag deployed and he
didn’t suffer long-term injuries. Everyone seems to know already
that medical care can kill patients (haven’t read The House of God
by Samuel Shem yet? Go get it now – brilliant and
easily the funniest book I’ve ever read), but it’s usually news that it
can kill the docs, too.
You will not have time to care for patients and treat them as well as you want to.
This is how the math works: Many patients. Few of you –
usually one, unless you have florid multiple-personality
disorder. So you have to take care of many patients. And if
they’re in the hospital, that means they’re really sick, otherwise
they’d still be at home. So you are scurrying around trying
to take care of all of them at once, which means that each individual
patient can only get a little bit of your time. Which means that
you won’t have a chance to sit at the bedside of that sweet old vet and
hear his stories of Iwo Jima. Or get to the bottom of why that
LOL (little old lady — medical slang’s been around way longer
than internet slang, buddy) can’t get her daughter to come
visit. Or to do any of that idealistic stuff that you cooked up
in your adolescent brain about really connecting with
patients. Get a grip! This is about action, about taking
care of business, about getting shit done, about making that note look
sharp because the attending is coming to round in an hour and he’s a
hardass, and that’s the difference your passing and getting recommended
for honors, so get on it already and quit yakking with the gomer (which
is an older patient with so many problems you should have never
let him/her get admitted in the first place — stands for ’get out
of my ER’, and I didn’t make it up the acronym, so direct
your indignant wrath elsewhere, thank you very much).
It’s about CYA — cover your ass. For better or for
worse, you just start to treat patients as problems and illness-bearing
entities for the sake of mental efficiency (”55yo WM s/p rad
prostatectomy c hx CHF & COPD”), which does not do much for your
empathetic abilities. Which brings us to…
You will start to dislike patients — and by extension, people in general.
OK, so now you’re overworked, underpaid, underfed, and
sleep-deprived. Whose fault is that? Well, it’s not really
the hospital’s fault — it’s just drawn that way. And it’s
not your boss’s fault, because somebody has to take care of patients,
and he can’t do it because he’s the boss, duh. So whom to
blame? Ah yes — patients. It’s the patients’
fault. They’re the ones creating all the work! The ones who
get in the way of your nap, your catching your favorite TV
show, having an uninterrupted meal, getting together with your
sig-o for some therapeutic nookie. How dare he have an MI while
you’re watching CSI? Does she have any consideration,
letting her blood pressure tank to 40 over palp at 3.30am, while you’re
making out with Elle MacPherson on the shores of Bora Bora (assuming
you’re lucky enough to be actually asleep)? The logic may be
twisted — patients, on the whole, don’t get sick voluntarily or
out of spite to you – but it is deeply ingrained
in medical culture. Heck, there’s even a slang term for it:
a hit. As in, “We got four hits on our admitting shift
at the ER today.” Hit — the same way you would be struck by a
mortar, or a shell, or a bomb. Getting hit is a Bad Thing.
These aren’t people — these are potentially lethal disasters that
can explode all over the place and ruin your whole day. “We got
hit again” — one more patient to take care of, says the
resident. But really, is that resident blameless? Or how
about Dr Hardass and his intransigent ways? Hell, they’re at
fault, too! Soon the circle of blame expands to the outer reaches
of the cosmos, and every potentially accountable organism from amoeba
to blue whale will be personally responsible for your misery. But
lest you think we’ve forgotten you, patients, take heart –
it’s all still your fault.
You will start to be disliked by people who do not even know you.
Once upon a day, in a time somewhere between the Cretaceous and
Triassic eras, physicians were held in awe and respect by the general
public. Their seeming omniscience was revered, and TV shows like Marcus Welby MD glorified their empathetic sangfroid and cool grace. Heck, they
were even considered sexy or something. I only noticed in recent
years that this ain’t the case no more, and doctors rank on the
contempt scale somewhere above meter maids and at or just below divorce
lawyers (but still much higher than I-bankers and other
invertebrates). The average Joe and Janet are tired of the
ever-rising cost of medical care, tired of all the stories of
malpractice, tired of the perceived greed of the pharmaceutical firms,
tired of the heartless profit-focussed practices of insurance
companies. But where do they pin their frustration? To
whom can they direct their ire? Insurance and drug companies are
nameless, faceless entities, as are hospitals. We need a person
to blame, like a nurse or a doc. Nurses are overworked and
massively underpaid, so it doesn’t really make sense to get mad at
them. But doctors — those Mercedes-driving, Armani-wearing,
private-school using, golf-playing
arriviste docs! By being the most visible symbol
of the medical profession, the doctor will have the dubious
distinction of being the scapegoat for all its
maladies. Fair? Hell no — we already told you
docs are overworked, underpaid, and often railing at the same
injustices Joe and Janet are. Most of them don’t even play
golf! But such it is. Just letting you know which
direction the rotten tomatoes are flying so you can consciously
choose to stand at the ‘toss’ or ’splat’ end of
the trajectory.
And the one reason why you should go into medicine:
You have only ever envisioned yourself as a doctor and can only derive professional fulfillment in life by taking care of sick people.
There’s really no other reason, and lord knows the world needs
docs. Prestige, money, job security, making mom happy, proving
something, can’t think of anything else to do, better than being a
lawyer, etc are all incredibly bad reasons for becoming a doc.
You should become a doc because you always wanted to work for Medecins Sans Frontieres
and your life will be half-lived without that. You should become
a doc because you want to be the psychiatrist who makes a
breakthrough in schizophrenia treatment. You should become a
doc because you love making sick kids feel better and being the
one to reassure the parents that it’ll all be OK, and nothing
else in the world measures up to that. Or as my general
surgery resident put it, you should become a doc because “my dad was an
ass surgeon, my big brother’s an ass surgeon, and by god I’m going to
become an ass surgeon.” But woe betide you if there’s
anything else, anything at all, that would also give you that
fulfillment. Because your pursuit of medicine would preclude
chasing down that other dream and a whole lot more – a dream
that could be much bigger, much more spectacular, much more
enriching for yourself and humanity than being a
physician. Just ask John Keats, Walker Percy, Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle, Giorgio Armani, or Michael Crichton (some of these
guys being more alive than others these days). Or you can
just ask me a few years down the road, by which time I should have
a blog entry for that question, too.
Mary Anne Martin
January 9, 2006 @ 2:13 pm
- Thanks for this great post. You’ve got some really good info in your blog. If you get a chance, you can check out my blog
on {medicus} at http://www.medicusnotion.com.
Mary Anne Martin
http://www.medicusnotion.com
JayD
June 15, 2007 @ 11:30 pm
Wow, you hit the nail on the head. I hated my first 2 years of med school, but told myself “everyone hates these 2 years. Just wait until 3rd and 4th year.” Those years came and it was disappointment after disalusionment. I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to do so I signed up for a prelim IM. I got 7 months into it and still didn’t have a clue. I said to hell with it and started thinking about what I really wanted to do with my time and my life.
That being said, everything above is completely true. I can add some more as well. How about getting sick of self inflicted diseases, ignored advice, backtalking alcoholics, drug abusing pregnant mothers, etc etc, all of who tell the doc to F off cause they’ll do as they please? Or the way the fields been relegated to cook book and cookie cutter practice in a lot of ways. Follow the guidelines or else, and nevermind that the patient is an individual because it’s in a study so it applys to all patients of this age group. Being a physician, or a surgeon especially, is more akin to working both as an auto repair mechanic and a complaint desk simultaneously for 90 hrs/wk. Then there is the fun in discovering that the treatment you’ve been prescribing for the past several years because the studies said it was the correct thing to do, well no the studies say it’s doing more harm and it’s no longer correct. The script farming drug seekers should be mentioned. They’re fun to deal with (sarcasm). One of my personal pet peeves is when the 94 y/o patient, demented and barely alive due to a ton of other medical problems , comes in and the surgeon thinks a total colectomy is needed. Can’t let the poor guy die in peace, we have to put him through surgery and let him die in recovery. Nice.
Malpractice was mentioned, but health insurance in general is a nightmare. In what other business does someone else tell you what you will accept as payement. The doc thinks the surgery is worth $300 due to time, overhead, etc, but insurance comes in and says “NO, you get $150 or nothing.” That is why your face time with the doc is barely 10 minutes. If they don’t rush though the patients they lose money for the day. Too many days of that and no more practice. Then there’s insurance directing patient care in the form of “you can’t prescribe that until you’ve tried this for 5 months,” or “you have to get an ultrasound before we’ll pay of the CT.” Nevermind the patient’s comorbidities or current ICU condition that make the insurance company’s demands completely foolish, irrelevent and a waste of both time and money. You’ll do it because they demand it. If insurance is bad enough as it is I won’t even get into the nightmare of red tape and dictated services that will be government paid universal health care. I believe our litigious society was mentioned above.
I could go on and on, but this was your rant, not mine. I went to med school for all the wrong reasons anyway. First, both my parents are docs and one was pushing for it, but what’s funny is that the other warned me and told me to run as far away as I could. Second, I went for a biology degree because I put no thought into where I was going and by my third year I realized that it was either med school or work in a molecular bio lab (I hate lab work). Third, I was naieve and believed I could work hard in school for a job that would allow me to put in less hours and still make very good money. Wrong. It sets you up to work longer hours under more stressful conditions. You don’t get a break until you’re the 65 y/o senior partner with residents and junior partners to do all the heavy lifting. Even still, I had a 64 y/o surgery attending putting in 96 hrs/wk and hating life because the bills (home and office) needed to be paid. No thanks. Finally, I wanted to be part of a noble profession that helped people and made a difference, and I did to an extent. There are still the few patients I remember that I know I helped, but they were so few and far between it just didn’t cut the mustard.
So now the field has one less doc, and I’ll leave with this. A surprisingly high number of the physicians that I explain my situation to agree and are looking to retire early, wished they would have gotten out when I did, or better yet not have gone to med school in the first place.
Jenny
October 29, 2007 @ 10:38 pm
I appreciate this article and comments. I am currenlty a medical student and am starting to have serious doubts. I do not want to invest any more time and money into this profession and need to make a choice soon. I have been looking at the various specialities and just can’t find one that seems worthwhile. I have an interest in Psychiatry, but am having doubts over this profession. I would appreciate any advice. Thank you.
Sarah
January 4, 2008 @ 4:55 pm
oh my god…
this was brilliant.
i just finished four years at one of the toughest universities
in north america and i have lost all my dreams.
at first i had all these ambitions and dreams about helping
kids in africa and doctors without borders and all that
wonderful stuff, and now i haev a heart of stone and it
feels like all i want to do is add stuff to my resume.
you are persian i assume from the name,
and so am i, and it’s as if it’s in our blood to have to become
doctors. before i start applying, i really want to konw if it’s for me
and the more time goes by the more it feels like it is NOT for me.
but i’m SO scared because i did so well in undergrad and i know i
CAN get in, i just don’t know if i WANT to get in.
i’m more confused than i’ve ever been…
i would appreciate it if you could email me or something
or give out some more advice.
i really appreciate this blog,
thanks.
dr ajon
April 17, 2009 @ 5:11 pm
wow. this is an eye opener. i thought undergrad was bad preparing for med school and thought once i get into med school it will all be better and i will have more time. i think i am in for a rude awakening…
billybob
April 17, 2009 @ 6:33 pm
While I find this article entertaining, and mostly correct, we must keep in mind that a positive attitude and outlook are essential qualities to any successful professional. No matter what job you choose, there are plusses and minuses. Medicine truly is a profession unlike any other in which your trials and struggles eventually end in potential to help others. People who cannot help themselves. Let us not forget that medicine, despite its difficulties and the way that it can harden an otherwise empathetic and sensitive individual, is a profession that will in the end be more rewarding than any other thing you do in this life. That is, of course, assuming you have a love and passion for it.
Jen
April 17, 2009 @ 9:37 pm
Thanks for the article. The main reason I went into orthopaedic surgery is because late in med school I realized that I hated sick people. Not the patients themselves, but the fact that you could work and work and work and at the end of the day you just hoped they were healthy enough to drag themselves out the front door (and come back in on someone else’s call). At least in ortho, I admit fully I’m an over-trained mechanic, but dammit, my patients leave at some reasonable time.
Last note, what bullshit is it that your plumber can charge whatever he wants to unclog your drain, but if I replace both knees the insurance companies automatically take 50% off the second. What am I, fucking Payless?
Boyan Pavlov
April 18, 2009 @ 3:20 pm
Let me tell you something. After reading the article I was little shocked of course nevertheless I do believe that if you are one of the many people who chose medicine and then realized that it was not the right path to follow, and now you are poutring your anger towards medicine. It’s all in our heads, and for all the pre-meds and med students, I would like to tell them something, you can have relationship, have friends, old and new ones, and still manage school if you have the MENTAL attidute. “You can do it, if you believe you can” !!!!!!!!!
medaholic
April 18, 2009 @ 4:53 pm
You write realistically about large problems and difficulties in the medical profession. However, for everyone who has read this, realize that there are just as many positive reasons why you should go to medical school and become a doctor.
There are pros and cons to every decision, and the grass always seems greener on the other side, but at the end of the day, you have to realize your own personal values and priorities and choose according to them. For some people, medicine presents a unique set of challenges that has personally and financially rewarding aspects. Others, were meant to do other great things.
Thanks again for the refreshingly honest post.
Anna
April 19, 2009 @ 2:27 am
This is so well-written. Humourous but sadly realistic.
ixne
April 19, 2009 @ 9:34 pm
$100,000 in debt…seems so quaint by today’s standards. Barring the filthy rich, $175,000-300,000 is becoming the norm, and the government just decided that residents don’t deserve deferment on their 6-figure loans. So every year we’re slaving away at minimum wage, we get to pay 4-5 figures in interest.
Pathetic
April 20, 2009 @ 12:40 am
My God – I think many of us have never known what its like to put in a hard days work (12-15 hours) on a slave farm on some centrale. My parents came from rough conditions in Cuba working as essentially slaves until we were able to leave. I think rather than compare life to your Harvard buddies in Aspen – take the silver spoon out of your ass and know that if you were a practicing physician – your life is already in the top 1% of people who have ever existed.
People who dont appreciate life but always look at the bad side of everything.
I am not saying you are wrong (as I don’t think medicine is not this mythical profession – thus I am not in it) – and of course you are entitled to your opinion – but always try to remember – there are people much much much worse off than you – when something is shitty just think, “Worse things have happened to better people.”
Jameson
April 21, 2009 @ 8:54 pm
Wow, absolutely hilarious. But I do think everyone should take this with a large grain of salt. I am about to start PA school this summer. I know I will avoid some of the headaches of the modern Doc by doing this, but may be trading them for others (ie dealing with the burnt out Doc!). Ultimately, I think people should go into medicine because they want to help people. If they truly don’t, but still go into medicine for other reasons (money, social status, family pressures), they will most likely find themselves unhappy.
MN
April 22, 2009 @ 4:27 pm
You’ve helped me great. I was expecting to read this and find myself in disbelief and completely uncertain about my future. But after reading this… I still feel I need to head in that direction. Many thanks. And kudos on this entry. VERY entertaining.
Dan
April 23, 2009 @ 12:59 pm
haha, this article is exactly why I became a PT. $80k salary, no stress, no on-call, 40 hr work week, no malpractice insurance, weekends off…I spent my 20s enjoying life thank you very much!
jk
April 29, 2009 @ 8:47 pm
oh shit I applied to med school!!!!!!
jk
April 29, 2009 @ 8:49 pm
atleast I’m not in it yet.. Should’ve done. Dental like my bro
Julie
May 2, 2009 @ 1:25 pm
Although I can’t say my experience of medical school has been quite like yours (I actually really enjoy it), it’s true that I’ve only been through the first 2 yrs, so who knows what awaits me.
I must say that I’m puzzled by many people’s perception that wanting to help people is a good enough reason, in itself, to become a doctor and something that sets the profession appart from others. Although I think it can be a factor that makes the career attractive, I hardly think the profession’s unique in being helpful! Nurses, psychologists, social workers, teachers, and countless other professionals are, to me, just as helpful & important as doctors. Being a doctor is just one way to be helpful to others and many other things (money, prestige and pleasing parents don’t count, of course!) should motivate someone to choose such a demanding career if they are to have any chance at being happy while doing it.
In my opinion, one should consider the job as a whole and think that even while sleep deprived, even when everyone seems to only be able to talk about all that’s wrong with doctors, even when the attending is yelling at you and you’ve never felt less competent, even when a patient dies and maybe you could have prevented it but didn’t, and even when you have to miss a good friend’s wedding and your parent’s anniversary or your child’s birthday because you’re scheduled to work, even then that’s what you want to be doing with your life. If not, you probably won’t enjoy it, because all these things are bound to happen. I think the main motivation should just be that it’s the career that seems to be the most interesting to you in spite of all that’s wrong with it.
Maybe I’ll end up regretting going to medical school one day, but I went because I knew that if I didn’t, I’d regret not trying it.
Alan
May 3, 2009 @ 1:32 am
I just finished an undergrad for Neuroscience and I’ve had my sights on getting a PhD and doing research as well as becoming a prof. I have considered medical school in the past, but I was well aware of the sheer amount of stress that all pre-med individuals have to go through, and that’s just pre-med!
This article was definitely an awakener for me. I am much more appreciative of the amount of work and stress medical doctors have to go through, and wish all those who persist despite these limitations the best of luck and health. I am surprised the government has refused to cut any slack on med students whatsoever, its almost punishing to becoming a doctor. It angers me how the world works.
rose, rn
July 15, 2009 @ 12:13 am
Sounds like nursing, you end up with a heart of stone. Lots of work and stress and no appreciation.
Susie
September 23, 2009 @ 11:37 am
My hubby is a pharmacist – working 50-60 hours per week and is earning close to 200k – no liability (his insurance is $200 per year) and he comes home to no worries. He deals with Assisted Living so no contact with patients which is nice. He has 3-4 weeks vacation plus all holidays and paternity leave of 3 months off. Most family docs, internists, peds docs, etc.. make less than that and have to go thru a much harder life.
Our quality of life is great! Always vacationing or with family n friends.
Agree with "Pathetic"
September 24, 2009 @ 8:33 am
Wow, you totally did NOT hit it on the head… Good thing you choose not to practice as you surely would have been unhappy. Your analysis may have certain components of truth to it, however, your assessment is, in my opinoin, unfair and highly subjective.
Yes, it is difficult, time-consuming, draining, hectic, and one is “poorly compensated” (still making more than 95% of the rest of americans). Yes, it is “slave like”, but that’s the appeal. Because in the end, all the sacrifices, they are made for a reason.. For those who chose to endure, it’s about accomplishment an
Navid
September 24, 2009 @ 8:44 am
Wow, you totally did NOT hit it on the head… Good thing you choose not to practice as you surely would have been unhappy. Your analysis may have certain components of truth to it, however, your assessment is, in my opinion, unfair and highly subjective.
Yes, it is difficult, time-consuming, draining, hectic, and one is “poorly compensated” (still making more >95% of the rest of americans). But the things that make it so difficult for you, are the same things others find so appealing. You see some of us enjoy the challenge. Some of us enjoy having to manage extremely delicate ICU patients, performing complicated surgical procedures, etc.
And for those who choose to endure, it’s about accomplishment. It’s about moving up on Maslow’s heirachy of needs: attempting to reach self-actualization.
These supposed reasons one should not go to medical school; they are your reasons. It’s important to draw that distinction.
DC
September 24, 2009 @ 2:28 pm
Be the Doctor of the Future. Become a Doctor of Chiropractic!
MCAT Guy
October 21, 2009 @ 5:06 pm
As someone who gave up applying to medical school in the nineties with a 38 MCAT to pursue educational work for premeds, I have to say your post awoke a lot of conflicting thoughts for me. I’ve kept up with a lot of students I helped in the nineties, and on the whole they seem to be doing okay now that they are doctors. They seem happy. I’m actually thinking about applying to MD PhD next year at 42. I have 3 kids and a good marriage, though.
Cat deLeo
October 27, 2009 @ 12:05 pm
I just want to thank you from the depths of my being and the bottom of my heart for this post! As a returning adult student (not old at 26, but returning) at The University of Texas at Austin and a former pre-med student, I am in classes with a lot of seniors going to medical school next year and who are starting to do their interviews. While part of me feels a jealous longing to be doing the same, I also have a passion for teaching and education, and have decided the right path for me is to become a professor of Microbiology, rather than a doctor. It was therapeutic to realize that my choice seems right, that the pressures and nightmares accompanying med school and the medical profession are as real as I had heard from indirect sources. I’ll stop wishing I were interviewing for med schools now, and start feeling sorry for my classmates that are!
katie
November 5, 2009 @ 2:28 pm
I think the scary thing about your article is that it is very honest and for the most part true….medical school takes someone with endless energy, money to spend(or money to borrow to spend for most of us), patience, dedication and most importantly someone who would not give up no matter how hard it may become in the future.but let’s think abput it for a aminute: you study 12 years, give or take, and then start to earn a good income.even then when you’re fresh out of med school no one might come to you since you are what they call an unexperienced doctor compared to others that have years and years of experience and diagnosing people.
so, at the end you might ask yourself it is worth it?………..
in my opinion you just have to make sure that it is what you really want vs what others put into your head(that is my peoblems anyway!)