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, you heartless ogre you?”
Since it’s certain that folks will continue to pose me 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, interrupting the flow of Hefeweizen on a fine Friday eve, I could just write it up and give them the URL. So that’s what I did.
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 (count ‘em — one) reason you should. I have assiduously gone through these arguments and expunged any hint of evenhandedness, saving time for all of you who are hunting for balance. And here are the reasons:
1) You will lose all the friends you had before medicine.
You think I’m kidding here. No, I’m not: I mean it in the most literal sense possible. I have a friend in UCLA Med School who lives 12min away, and I’ve seen her once — in three years. I saw her more often when she lived in Boston and I was in LA, no foolin’.
Here’s the deal: 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…
2) 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 do 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 medicus upright and functioning. When it’s a choice between having a meal or getting some 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).
3) 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 $40-80k/yr). Granted, any job these days involves hierarchy and superiors, but none of them keep you in such penury for so long. Speaking of penury…
4) You will get yourself a job of dubious remuneration.
For the amount of training you put in and the amount of blood, sweat and tears medicine extracts from you (I’m not being metaphorical here), you should be getting paid an absurd amount of money as soon as you finish residency. And by ‘absurd’, I mean ‘at least a third of what a soulless investment banker makes, who saves no lives, produces nothing of social worth, and is basically a federally-subsidized gambler’ (but that’s a whole different rant, ahem).
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 godssakes — you should get paid more than some spreadsheet jockey shifting around numbers, some lawyer defending tobacco companies or some consultant maximizing a client’s shareholder value, whatever the hell that means.
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.
5) You will have a job of exceptionally high liability exposure.
But wait, it gets better. Who amongst these professionals has to insure himself against the potential wrath of his own clients? The investment banker’s not playing with his own money. And even if he screws up to the tune of, oh, hundreds of billions of dollars, Uncle Sam’s there to bail him out (see: World History, 2008-2009).
The lawyers? They’re doing the suing, not being sued. But the doctors? Ah. 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 the 4 May 2005 issue of The New Yorker entitled Piecework — check it out.
6) You will endanger your health and long-term 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 (and so much for the now-outlawed drug-company sponsored meals — 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 where everybody’s sick, duh), 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? Groggy doctors can kill patients when they don’t mean to.
Groggy docs can also hurt themselves. One friend stuck herself with a needle as she was drawing blood from an HIV patient. She’s fine now, but that was a good 9 months of panic (PS: she has since quit clinical medicine). 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 the second funniest book I’ve ever read, after Catch -22), but it’s usually news that it can kill the docs, too.
7) You will not have time to care for patients as well as you want to.
This is how the math works: Many patients, few of you — usually one, unless your name is Tara with florid multiple-personality disorder (no, it ain’t the same as schizophrenia). 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 righteously 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…
8) 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 the gomer in 345E 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 just to spite 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.
Patients aren’t people, you see — they 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 the attending 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, remember — it’s all still your fault.
9) People who do not even know you will start to dislike 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 darn 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! (They don’t have time. Except for dermatologists). 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.
10) You’re not helping people nearly as much as you think.
So by now I may have managed to inspire your righteous indignation with some of the things I’ve said about the medical profession. But maybe in the back of your head, you were still thinking, “Well, even though it sounds like a bunch of black bitter bile, he does kinda sorta have a point.” In which case, I’ve almost certainly lost you on this one: “Whaddya mean you’re not helping people? Isn’t that what medicine is all about?”
Well, actually, yes and no. Sure, there is the immediate gratification of delivering a baby, fixing someone’s eyesight with LASIK, catching a melanoma before it causes trouble, or prescribing some thermonuclear antibiotics to kick a nasty bronchitis before it becomes lethal pneumonia.
But, depending on the field you choose, most of the time you’re not doing that. You’re treating chronic conditions that are self-inflicted: emphysema, obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes. Moreover, patients tend to be non-compliant — they basically don’t do what you tell ‘em to do (NB: mea culpa). In fact, you too are probably one of those non-compliant patients who doesn’t exercise more, eat healthier, and take pills as they’re prescribed. Anecdotally, 50%+ of prescribed medications are taken incorrectly or never.
So there you are, like Cuchulain the legendary Celtic warrior, wading into the ocean and, in your rage, trying to fight the invulnerable tide and improve the health of your patients. You pour all your earnestness, good intentions and expertise into it, and — not a whole lot happens. Your efforts bear no fruit. So you suck it down and move on, sustained by the occasional kid who does get better, that eyesight that does improve, that bronchitis that doesn’t turn into pneumonia. Win some, lose many more.
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 Médecins Sans Frontières 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 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.
PS: To those who are wondering what I’ve been up to since the writing of this article — that’s a long story. Most recently, I’ve been writing books, including the #1 rated dating book on Amazon, The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman’s Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible. Check out also the very popular dating ebook for men and my other blog for more articles, as well as my HuffPost archive.
PPS: As of 9/24/2011, there’s a Hacker News thread on this piece, with hundreds of intelligent comments from people with firsthand experience about the medical lifestyle. Check it out.
PPPS: There have been a lot of comments on this article over the years, so if you wish to comment, here are the rules: if you have an intelligent contribution to make, I’ll approve it. I’m not anonymous, so you shouldn’t be either. There’s no room for hate, spite or derision on this blog, so comments containing them won’t see the light of day.
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.
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!)
slu
December 2, 2009 @ 9:39 pm
loved this blog! very funny…i am a physician…and get up every morning and face these obstacles and laugh…it is a great profession…in spite of it all…
Josh
February 7, 2010 @ 2:03 pm
So basically, the only viable reason left to go into medicine is a big ego with a guilt complex. I had this feeling when I dropped out of interviews and went to get an MBA.
JayD
February 25, 2010 @ 6:04 am
I had a post above from 2007 and thought it would be fun to post a follow up and some response to other posters. Looking back on that now my previous post reads harshly, but I still agree with most all of it. Most all docs I’ve worked with then and talked to since have said they wouldn’t do it again or recommend it to their kids. Despite that I do remember 3 or 4 who truely loved what they did. I suspect they knew this before entering medical school and did not apply for prestige, income, authority, respect, etc. So yes, those people are out there. However, the sacrifices all of them make are very real and reflected in the original article and my post above, albiet in a harsh and bitter tone. I’d suggest looking up alcohol/drug abuse, divorce and suicide rates among physicians compared to other professions simply to point out comparative stress levels. An OB/GYN relative of mine had two attempts herself.
As for myself since the post above, I’ve moved on to an ancillary health profession similar to posters above doing PT and Pharm. I have a 40hr week, a very nice paycheck, no malpractice, no insurance hassle, lots of time with the wife and kids, ability to relocate almost anywhere, in very high demand, and I still help people. I’ve set up a life for myself that I couldn’t have begun to have in medicine, nor can my engineer brother or attorney sister-in-law. For me it is a much improved lifestyle and I wouldn’t go back for anything. I’m glad there are those few who truely enjoy it because it’s certainly a noble and needed profession. I just feel sad for those who are unhappy doing it but are stuck from debt, mortgage, kids, as well as those who simply do it for their own ego. In older times it was respected. Today nobody cares that you’re a doc except family members and other docs.
Clearly different people are fulfilled by different means and some will love medicine for it’s challenge, responsibility, and impact on patients lives. So for anyone reading this, maybe medicine is your place and you know you’ll love it. However, even then the sacrifices are still very real, so do your research, shadow several docs and ask the hard uncomfortable questions before applying. For anyone else applying because parents expect it (as was my case) or income, ego, status or whatever other reason I highly recommend against it and predict deep disappointment. There are other options that provide more personal time, money, status or whatever else it is you’re looking for that don’t put patient’s lives at risk while you figure it out. That’s one other reason I left. I knew that my discontented attitude was inherently leading to a disservice to my patients despite really wanting to do my best for them. My heart simply wasn’t in it.
Good luck.
arun
March 19, 2010 @ 2:20 pm
I think everyone is agreeing with this because they are all med students hoping to knock other med students out. So quit it you cutthroat faggots.
Steph
March 25, 2010 @ 3:22 pm
I just cancelled my registration for the MCAT, not kidding. I am so done with this pre med path that leads to a self made hell. Thank you for writing this. I am going to apply to PA school and have a much more enjoyable life.
Nick
March 28, 2010 @ 5:10 pm
Steph go take your test. Stop reading opinion blogs.
Chris Rosson
March 29, 2010 @ 5:03 pm
Well I am a 4th year undergraduate and for the first three years of my college career, I had made up my mind that I wanted to go into medicine and I did everything that I had to to get in. But in my last year, I began having some serious doubts as to whether committing another 4 years of my life, 3-7 years of residency, and being close to $200,000 in debt would be worth it in the end..not to mention the lifestyle I might have as a practicing physician. What really hit me was when a few residents told me that if they could go back, they’d probably go into another profession. So now I’m freaking out, talking to different physicians, and am also looking into alternatives such as PA or Dentistry. The two options I’m weighing are: Would I regret going to PA or Dentistry feeling that I could have made it through MD school and that I underachieved/doubted myself or would I regret it more if I did go to MD school and it wasn’t what I expected. I would appreciate if you could email me your thoughts. Thanks!
Tania
April 17, 2010 @ 5:12 am
LMAO at Nick’s comment
Mark Price
May 1, 2010 @ 11:13 am
Well, it seems all areas of the medical profession are undergoing some type calamity of sorts. I am a pharmacist and our salaries are expected to decline soon(over the next 10 years). Why? Because the major pharmacies are beginning to import pharmacists from overseas. Why hire a retail pharmacists for 85K-100K when you can get one for 65K or less. That is hard core reality many pharmacist are in denial about. But, pharmacies are businesses and it always about the bottom line.
I know that medical school is 10x harder than pharmacy school, but its all so much work and a real damn shame.
Claudia
June 7, 2010 @ 4:33 pm
Thank you so much for this. I have been really pondering this for the past few months. This article was the NO BS that I was looking for. Although my choice was to become a PA. My thinking is that it all applies, just 15% less or something. If you have any comments on this I would greatly appreciate it. Your blog was thoughtful, funny, heartwarming and eye opening.
I am interviewing a PA on Friday, and hope that he can shed some light on the reality as well. I’m not afraid, I just don’t want to lie to myself or others.
Thank you again.
ppp
July 15, 2010 @ 11:24 am
Why can insurance companies bargain with doctors and patients cannot?
I’ve naively wondered if we could take the middle man out of the picture, pay the doctors a decent amount higher than what the insurers pay, but lower that what the absurd hospital bills tend to be.
I finished the MD and went into research. Most of my days are 9 to 5, but I love lab, I don’t have to deal with enormous amounts of people (patients, bosses, other arrogant doctors…so many big egoes) and I have hobbies! Make little money, but I have no debt as of now.
My wife is a doc, and she does it because she can only see herself caring for patients. She did it for the right reason. I did it to feel important, it was stupid, thank god I found research. Pays little, but I bike to the rock climbing site.
Jasie
July 21, 2010 @ 8:30 pm
Just 2-3 weeks ago, I thought about going back to Med School. I earned my masters degree in a research field and been working in IT field with $120k per year. Totally different job, nothing related to what I studied for. I did it because the pay was good, needed to help my parents and pay tuition fees for my sibling who has just graduated from med school.
I think it’s my turn to follow my dream. But I am doubting myself now. I am 28 thinking about having a kid, not sure if 2 years (pre-med) + 4 years (med) + 4 (residency) is the right thing for me?
Jo
August 1, 2010 @ 9:08 pm
It applies to not only your career path, but also in any decision making process you should always consider the pros v. cons. To those of you that only focus on the negative, I agree that this isn’t your purpose in life.
Not to mention, I know plenty of people who maintain good relationships with friends and significant others while in medical school. Those who are weeded out by the hardship of medical school and a career in medicine simply aren’t the type of people I would call friend. Either that or it’s easier to use the excuse of medical school to end a relationship.
LM
August 18, 2010 @ 10:22 am
i love u.
Victoria
August 30, 2010 @ 3:18 pm
This was interesting blog and I agree. I’m a premed student who just graduated with my B.A and B.S in Biomed and Spanish and I think that although your blog is correct about the downfalls about medicine it should also indicate the highlights of the field. When you think about it physicians are analogous to God’s ombudsmen, they can turn someone’s fate around or they can ensure that someone continues on the correct path, and let’s not fool ourselves that’s powerful. Yes, in the process you injure your livelihood and put yourself at risk but at the end of the day wouldn’t you have done that already even if you weren’t apart of the medical profession. If you are a premed student or a prospective applicant and are easily deterred by this blog, maybe you should reconsider your choice of professions, because this is a profession where you will be doubted, discouraged and underestimated. This blog only reinforced what I already and even reinforced my decision to go into the field. The reason why is because my desire to become a physician supersedes me. Its bigger than me. What I hope to do for the community that I serve is a mission that is larger than myself, and that is the reason why I’ve chosen the profession. If you had the ability to do something well and did not wouldn’t that be cowardice? You would never fully be able to live to your full potential because you would never be able to use all of our natural talents.
Medicine is a major responsibility and is not for the weak spirited. I think that being average and having an “average” life is tempting because you have “average” responsibilities and average duties. Being someone exceptional takes work and disappointment with great responsibilities, but you have made a much grander effect on the world. Its really up to you to decide.
Tom
September 30, 2010 @ 9:09 pm
I’m a 50 year old orthopedic surgeon. I’m busy, successful, and like going to work.
I believe that most of the points made by Dr Binazir are absolutely correct, though. For those that have commented that he is overly cynical, and perhaps not cut out to be a physician, I would disagree. It’s unusual that an individual gets through that much education without ‘drinking the koolaid’. I know of only one or two others that chose not to do a residency.
Sleep, relationships and ‘normal life’ are lost during training. Debt accumulates. It’s not that friends abandon young physicians, it’s just that they are never seen. Oddly, many physicians are not aware of what their future practices will be like, and feel underpaid and unloved by their patients.
While it was a good career path for me, it has been difficult in a way I hadn’t imagined when I started. There are many interesting and satisfying professions that don’t demand your soul in the way that medicine must. I haven’t encouraged my children to attend medical school.
abinazir
November 29, 2010 @ 10:11 pm
Thanks for all the comments, guys! In the end, it comes down to love. If you love what you do, you’ll overcome any obstacle and keep doing it — the work is its own reward. If not, you are incurring the opportunity cost of not being able to do the thing that really does fire you up.
Cristy Iffert
December 7, 2010 @ 12:08 pm
You are unquestionably the real thing!
MDR
December 16, 2010 @ 6:15 pm
I am a physician in practice in Internal meidicine for about 10 years. though I spend the vast majority of my day complaining about how much medicine sucks I will try to give a balanced and reasoned opinion in case anyone who is considering going into it is reading
first the good news, It is a pretty stable field. despite probably some changes coming up I was never in fear of losing my job pretty much no matter what the economy did. In general, you can practice just about anywhere in the country from rural to city to suburb though certain subspecialties may only be practical at major urban medical centers. while the prestige is definitely not what it sued to be I think most people are still impressed by physicians and they are still generally respected. While the compensation is not what it should be relative to some other fields and most physicians could make more doing something else with the time and years of training they put into it, you can still make a very comfortable living. Also there are a handful of patients I have grown very close to and really enjoy seeing and know they truly appreciate my efforts for them.
the downside, while I do not think you deifnitely lose friends it is hard to maintain the smae relationship you ahd with friends and family before. I can’t describe the sadness, and loneliness I felt as a resident driving in to work on Christmas morning at 6:00Am seeing no one else on the roads and knowing i was going to be there for at least 36 staright hours (Please note there have been a lot of changes in work hours for residents) Also You rarely help people. the vast majority of my day is spent seeing people with colds, minor aches and pains and things that really do not need to see a doctor. While I have helped some people and maybe even “saved a life or two” that is exceedingly rare and probably outnumbered by times I have made a mistake ( this is not meant to be an indictment of my own skills as a physician or be falsely humble, i think the majority of honest physicians would tell you the same thing.) most of the time I am treating chronic medical problems like diabetes or High blood pressure that probably help the patient in the long run but the immediate satisfaction is not there. and for every appreciative nice patient it seems like there are 5 others who are opiate addicted, have unrealistic expectations and overly demanding
Soory this is a lot longer than I intended but hope this may help.
Straight doing it,
December 27, 2010 @ 7:58 pm
I am a diagnostic radiologist. Med school was tough but it was not the end of the world. i had fun in med school with a positive attitude. got laid all the time, made great friends, My attitude is what helped me be successful in my goals. Now i make around $440,000 a year, take a lot of vacations, malpractice is a pain but its not terrible. My only regret is being away from family for so long. other than that, i am straight doing it right now.
abinazir
December 29, 2010 @ 3:18 pm
For those of you who read Samuel Shem’s immortal classic ‘The House of God’, you’re aware that some specialities do not suck. In the book, they are called ‘NPC specialties’ — no patient care. And they are ‘six and only six’: Rays (radiology), Gas (anesthesiology), Path (pathology), Ophthalmology and Psychiatry. Of those six, Derm, Ophtho and Rays are a cut above. Med students have caught on — hence, the stringent requirements for scoring a residency in one of those specialities. I also like Peds, just because.
ambivalent
January 5, 2011 @ 12:48 pm
i’m an engineer in a relationship with a doc. let me tell you, i was pretty ignorant of what doctors make. it’s usually described as a “comfortable living.” i only recently discovered that here, “comfortable” equates to a starting salary of around $140k. which is, y’know, a lot. more than the vast majority – myself included – can ever hope to attain in their lives.
so let me add another stress that wasn’t expressed in the relationship section, and this one applies only to women: in addition to losing your prime years, you’re also going to come out the gate out-earning essentially any guy who crosses your path, barring other doctors. while i’d like to pretend that i’m above such pettiness, i am forced to admit that it’s tough, as a man, to accept that your partner is worth twice as much per hour to society as you are. i frankly doubt that i’ll be able to keep this bitter pill down.
health career confusion
January 18, 2011 @ 5:11 am
Thank you for posting an honest account of your experience in medical school. I’m an undergrad majoring in exercise science, and was preparing for a career in physical therapy until recently, when I discovered in my experience volunteering and learning about the field, I don’t really want to learn more. I also only have outpatient experience, which could be the reason why I feel this way. So I was considering other fields, including MD/DO, PA, or nurse anesthetist because the operating room interests me and I would like to assist in surgeries. Thank you for showing revealing the truth about the MD path. You hear about how rewarding a career it is, but no one shares the downsides. And there seems to be many downsides.
t
February 11, 2011 @ 8:03 pm
this was a very interesting blog for me to read. I recently was contacted by someone asking about going to medical school. Like me, this person was a nurse and thinking about going back to school
I went to medical school after being a nurse for 8 years. I had always wanted to be a doctor and really couldn’t see myself not doing it.
So here is the up side to all of this: I LOVE MY JOB. I love everything about it. I love the patients, I love the people I work with.
Here is more upside: I have been married for over 20 years (and I still love my husband) I have SIX kids, and so far they seem okay…..
I have friends and a life. I like to swim, run, play tennis, play golf and watch my kids activities.
More good stuff: I make a really good living. I make more money than I ever expected to make.
Better: My student loans weren’t so bad because I went to a state school for medical school. I had three kids when I started school and had another in med school, another during residency and then my last one when I was an attending.
More: I was a CHIEF resident with five kids…..and I LOVED it.
So for all you nay sayers: If you really, really, really want to be a doctor, Go for it. Not a day goes by that I regret my decision. You can have relationships and a life…you just have to remember all the people who helped you get to where you are….my husband was my biggest fan….and I will never ever be able to thank him enough for encouraging me to go to school….he never once said don’t do it..
P.S. My oldest daughter is considering medical school…I told her “good for you!”
pensive student
February 18, 2011 @ 11:56 pm
Sweet blog, I think it’s cool that it’s still garnering comments 5+ years after publishing. I’m just about ready to hop on the admissions circuit myself, and actually came across this article when googling “what to do when visiting a medical school” (or something similar) ironically, it was the first result too :D
I’ve been giving this thing a lot of thought myself, and am still kind of hopping the fence between engineering and medicine (graduating with a BSE in computer science engineering next spring).
But to be honest, I think any career is pretty much what you make of it. I think the intrigue of being in an environment of higher learning in general is the fact that you are surrounded by imaginative individuals, and that kind of rubs off on you. I don’t know what I’ll be doing in the future, but in all honesty, I don’t feel like I’ll be stuck in some rut of a career which I hate. As a doctor, or engineer, or any other trained professional, one would hope to gain a broad perspective during education, so that when falling into a situation in life which is less-than-ideal, they wouldn’t box themselves in and simply rest on their laurels in hopes of a different tomorrow. No, I think the benefits of having an academic professional education is that you are essentially trained to be resourceful and to look in occasionally nontraditional sources for answers, and as a result, I would like to think people would apply it to their own lives too.
Yeah med school sucks, then again a lot of other things suck too, it depends on the individual what factors add to their personal level of suckage, and how they deal with it.
Overall interesting article, I like the dialog that it has generated in the comments.
abinazir
March 5, 2011 @ 2:50 pm
Thanks for the note! As I said in the article, the only reason to go into medicine is — because you love to practice medicine! And if you do, lord knows that the world needs you. Kudos to you — you are doing an immeasurable service to humanity. And good luck to your daughter!
dontmatter
March 19, 2011 @ 2:20 am
First of all, it doesn’t matter anymore. The world’s going to end soon.
Second of all, my first of all is the only comment that matters.
Third of all, if you have read the previous comments, and you do not believe me, read on.
Doing what you love is not easy in the world we live, but pursuing that goal should not be simply shut off. Chances are, you are currently either a premed, a medical student, or a physician having a bad day if you are reading this article.
If you are a medical student and you are unhappy, you need to really take a break when you find one, think about what the problem is, and actively look around you for the advice you need to achieve your goal of personal joy. The doctors are around you, and they are only a breath away from providing you with the advice based on true experience.
If you are a physician and you are reading it in serious unhappiness, you need to analyze your current situation. Look at where your life was, think about what your state of mind was when you started your journey, and actively look at the options you have for improving your life style. You may be agreeing with this article based on your own experience, however, you shouldn’t fill your mind with only the negativity of the profession. Talk with other physicians in your field who you can seriously pour your thoughts to without thinking of your ego, and discuss what the profession offers in terms of happiness. If the joy is unattainable, and you know you will never attain it based on good reasoning, then you need to weigh your options, or suffer the reality.
Finally, for the premeds out there who are just unsure:
You are about to embark on a costly journey on many levels. It will take a mental toll, a financial toll, a social toll, and a physical toll. Do not think that you can make yourself immune to the trainings of a profession that warrants all these issues. Talk about them with the doctors you shadow. Evaluate your life, and ask yourself if you can take the journey. Don’t go into it because you are “gifted” or “smart.” Don’t go into it for the money. Don’t go into it because you have the stats. Don’t go into it because everyone wants you to. Don’t go into it because it will make you look good. Don’t go into it because it gives you prestige. Don’t go into it because you didn’t think of anything else to do with your life.
Go into it because you need every aspect of it in order to be happy. Go into it because your life feeds on extreme mental challenge. Go into it because the feeling you get from studying the hell out of organic chemistry releases an extreme amount of endorphins. Go into it because you’re ok with that physics class taking over your life, and the pain and stress that other people talk about does not exist with you because you love to learn. What they call pain, you call feeding your lifestyle the joy and happiness it craves. Go into it because the medical world fascinates you. Go into it because you have wieghed your options well, and you know that medicine is the only thing that can satiate your hunger.
abinazir
April 5, 2011 @ 4:20 am
Great comment! Agree with very nearly everything that you say, except for one: “Go into it because your life feeds on extreme mental challenge.” Medicine ain’t exactly theoretical physics — it’s mostly glorified plumbing. The extreme mental challenge arises when you still have to make good decisions with 99% of your neurons shut down from sleep deprivation.
Likes people to take responsibility for themselves
April 19, 2011 @ 1:29 am
Re: #54 ambivalent
You think “out-earning every guy you come across” (in the medical profession you don’t think “every guy” might comprise any number of male doctors??) is a reason not to go to medical school??
What kind of dusty old patriarch are you? You may not like be out-earned by a woman, and that’s fair. But you’re sure as hell the only person who’d better fix this problem – by themselves. Don’t drag anyone but the party at fault into this – the prejudices you’ve inherited. And maybe ease up on exert social pressure to keep women out of medical school. Stop acting like sexist oppression is an a priori fact (read: the fault of those upon whom it is perpetrated) and take responsibility for your own antiquated assumptions.
[snarky comment deleted]
Nose Job Recovery
April 25, 2011 @ 2:13 am
Thank you for posting an honest account of your experience in medical school. I’m an undergrad majoring in exercise science, and was preparing for a career in physical therapy until recently, when I discovered in my experience volunteering and learning about the field, I don’t really want to learn more. I also only have outpatient experience, which could be the reason why I feel this way. So I was considering other fields, including MD/DO, PA, or nurse anesthetist because the operating room interests me and I would like to assist in surgeries. Thank you for showing revealing the truth about the MD path. You hear about how rewarding a career it is, but no one shares the downsides. And there seems to be many downsides.
wants to be a doctor
May 4, 2011 @ 9:29 pm
This is a great blog, and timely for me, because I am very seriously considering medical school after having worked as a teacher. I have occasionally questioned whether I should really be a teacher. I KNOW for a fact that I would be a much better doctor than teacher. I love medicine and healthcare, and most of all, I love people. And, I know that there is nothing else, no other profession that would make me happy. I feel as though I have to do it. The problem? I’m in my early fifties, and although I am willing to make the time and financial commitment, I wonder now if it will be worth it, since I’ll likely be finishing when I’m in my sixties, obviously. But even with that, I know I’ll deeply regret it if I don’t pursue it.
miis
May 17, 2011 @ 12:24 am
thanks for the gleeful rant, ali. nicely written and good down-to-earth advice. and lightly humorous, to boot!
personally, i grew up in a hospital and with docs in the family and i know i want to go into some kind of healthcare field, but i’m just not sold on which yet. i know that the devil on my shoulder wants that MD for the approval and prestige (and, yeah, the $$). we’ll see. but there’s also the pure little child in me that still goes starry eyed every time she sees a doctor because they were my heroes when i was little. and i think… well, i think we all need to grow up and become the hero we dreamed of, don’t we? on one hand, i wonder if i’ll actually like the work. i’m more into social sciences and working with people and motivating people than natural sciences and biology. but at the same time, i’m worried that if i don’t pursue medicine, i’ll never become my own hero.
i’ll do my best to remember to report back here in a year or a few, once i’ve got things sorted out.
@wants – dude, go for it. you know you want it. that’s fucking awesome that you want to pursue it in your 50s. i hope you kick ass in med school and love it all.
@ambivalent – honestly i wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with a man who beats himself up over not making more money than me!
@t – thank you for the counteropinion. it’s really inspiring.
@pensive student – “Yeah med school sucks, then again a lot of other things suck too, it depends on the individual what factors add to their personal level of suckage, and how they deal with it.”
haha exactly!
@OP – “Medicine ain’t exactly theoretical physics — it’s mostly glorified plumbing.”
@ambivalent – honestly i wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with a man who beats himself up over not making more money than me!
@t – thank you for the counteropinion. it’s really inspiring.
Kevin
June 5, 2011 @ 12:32 am
This is what happens when you enter medicine for the wrong reasons. You start a blog to bitch and whine about how miserable your life is. Try growing up in a country where having a dream is not even feasible.
Too Late « hope MD
June 5, 2011 @ 10:00 am
[...] just read this blog entry entitled “Why You Should Not Go to Medical School: A Gleefully Biased Rant.” He brings up some interesting points, 10 reasons to not go and only one reason to [...]
Ben
June 20, 2011 @ 10:32 pm
Just finished my first year of med school, still love every minute of it. Yea I’ve come to realize that medicine isn’t exactly what I thought it would be. There are plenty of pitfalls but what job is perfect? I may still be the slightly naive optimist but I would encourage anyone reading this not to let it dissuade you from seriously considering the medical profession. Not all attendings are assholes, not all practicing physicians are jaded.
Kurt from best muscle building program
July 9, 2011 @ 9:24 pm
This is a good read. Hilarious. My girlfriend is a nurse and she wants to go into Medicine for the reason that–one of the points above–she starts disliking up-front care for patients. She still wants to be in the medical field though and she said being a doctor you see less of your patients than being a nurse. Better pass this blog for her to read.
Dave
August 25, 2011 @ 1:32 am
I’m a 4th year medical student applying for residency positions. I definitely would not reapply to medical school knowing what I do now. My limited free time is spent searching for ways to pay off my loan debt without pursuing a residency and clinical practice. If someone were to give me $196,000 today I would walk away and never look back.
Florentino
September 22, 2011 @ 2:56 am
Ali, what do you say about my friend? She wants to go to MD school and be a dermatologist because she had a skin disorder when she was a child. But we are both from the same cultural background and I know better, especially since her brother is a lawyer and her sister is an engineer. She did have the disease, but I think she was culturally and family influenced to take this career path. But I ask because of this. My friend, I don’t think, really has the personality to be a doctor. She has some serious psychological complexes stemming from both her skin disorder and her authoritarian family, and these issues give her a remarkable lack of empathy. She is hypersensitive to any sort of criticism or even perceived (such as if I talk to a friend for a moment and then bring conversation back to her, she gets angry visibly as if I rejected her) abandonment, but also very quick to judge and condemn other people, and also is very close-minded. She is also self-centered and can be extremely callous. Everything else is okay- she’s a better memorizer and studies hard, but her personality is absolutely not okay for someone who wants to be a doctor, maybe an accountant or lawyer, but not a doctor. I tried to tell her that dermatological researching is a great idea, and it can help people on a much larger scale. She hasn’t thought of other career options and her GPA is around mine like 3.3-3.4.
geoff
September 24, 2011 @ 12:39 am
I totally disagree. Finished medical school (Md/PhD) in 2003, residency/fellowship in 2008, and in practice in academia for 3 years now, and none of what he wrote is true, or at least, universally true. Medical school wasn’t that bad, I met my wife during that time, and had a lot of fun. Hours were bad periodically, but only on certain rotations, and I now have a job with regular hours, and I don’t have any debt. The secret? I’m a pathologist, and the federal government paid for medical school through the medical scientist training program (i.e. I got paid to go to medical school). The path to neurosurgery is similar to what he wrote, but all of medicine does not equal neurosurgery. There are plenty of routes through the training that don’t require one to kill one’s self, and it’s not fair to say so.
And….I might have to amend one thing. He’s pretty close about the money thing. You are not payed nearly enough in academia for spending your 20s in school and working up. No one starves in medicine, but you may not get payed enough to save effectively for sending kids to college if you stay in academics. Private practice gets you several FOLD more money, not just a percentage more.
Phillip
September 24, 2011 @ 4:17 am
Just stumbled upon this gem.
I’m an Australian doctor married to a doctor with an eldest daughter a doctor who was not persuaded by us to do something else.
After raising and educating our 6 children while a perpetual renter in the big city (paid too little to save deposit and buy large enough house) we moved to a remote rural community and took sole charge of the health of 2 town, loads of farms surrounding and a little rural hospital all in the second poorest postcode area in our state. Only charge the fee set by the universal “insurer” Medicare Australia, no out-of-pocket expense to any patient.
Ali Binazir has highlighted a lot of the downside of medical working conditions in the first world with intelligence and wit. He has flushed out some obnoxious people in the process as he knew he would and nothing anyone says to them will change their point of view so wisely stays silent.
While society refuses to pay full fare for health care and expects other people to sacrifice wealth, health and relationships in ways only expected by kids of their parents, practitioners of medicine can justly echo his words. Make the lifestyle of the doctors humane and caring and there will be many more of them, they will make fewer mistakes and make few complaints.
While people vote for tax cuts for themselves, higher wages for themselves and refuse their governments the power to subsidise the health care of the poor and disadvantaged then the moral fault lies with them I noticed with dismay and disgust the public outcry against your President just recently and he was thwarted in doing the best and fairest outcome
burning out
September 24, 2011 @ 6:01 am
Well said, funny but sadly true. i’m an MD nearly out of residency and it’s been tough living the reality of each of these truths. I did not choose medicine for the “[one good reason]” stated above.In my case, there were some hefty family obligations involved, the academic attainability of the position, encouragement of non-medical people around me, and the promise of a stable well-paying job (don’t judge).
Here were some thoughts i had at the time that i now know were warning signs of future disgruntlement to come:
“i should do it because it’s honorable helping people, contributing to the community, which are good things to do with your life, right?”
“i like learning, and any knowledge learned is good”
“it’s a job just like any other job, obviously you won’t love every part of it”
If you find yourself abstracting/ idealizing the profession to justify going into it, don’t do it, for your own good. a few of the posters above seem to do this, ex. Victoria, pensive student, navid (maslow’s hierarchy, for real??). apologies if i’m completely off-base– hopefully everyone is happy with their decisions.
When it comes down to it, it’s not about abstract ideals but instead being able to live with daily reality, which includes constant, high volume interaction with lots of people both pleasant and extremely unpleasant (do you enjoy customer service? a lot of it?), responsibilities where the consequence of a mistake is death or bodily harm, very high patient expectations, overtime as the rule, and lack of partition between your personal life and work.
There’s no judgement upon your character if you don’t agree with living like this. i’d advise you to pick something else though, or risk being unhappy.
It’s interesting how you can discern which commentators actually went through the training process from those who didn’t. I don’t think those who didn’t go through it have a place in characterizing those that tried and were dissatisfied as lazy or ungrateful. this article’s not about being unwilling to work.
stefan
September 24, 2011 @ 8:14 am
Most of the negatives listed in this article come from not having control over your practice. When you have a high school grad looking at your ‘productivity’ telling you what your overhead should be, how hard you need to work, etc. it is a fundamental disconnect. Dont think that by working as an employee physician you are liberated from the ‘business’ of medicine. The transactions of life cannot be adequately/fairly outsourced. Best to learn how manage your OWN time. If you must be an employee, you should write the contract that gives you the freedom you need. There is a reason that doctors used to have the day off Wednesdays-it was the only way to stay sane, to have a family and to maintain the relationships that are important.
Jack Rabbit
September 24, 2011 @ 12:06 pm
This was sad to read. Do what you love and take time to figure out what that is. There are lots of ways to make money. Fewer (but easier) ways to be happy.
lukas
September 24, 2011 @ 12:39 pm
hi ali,
that’s been a great and honest post, although i only partially agree. i went through med school myself but never really practiced as a physician because of the aforementioned reasons.
a friend of mine, who is a professor of cardiology, and I have started a blog, adressed to physicians looking for alternative careers and basically “how to hack medicine”.
happy if you have look at http://www.medrcrunch.net
best
-L
abinazir
September 24, 2011 @ 1:48 pm
Geoff — There are lacunae in medicine that can make it a winning proposition. The six ‘NPC specialties’, as outlined by the Fat Man in Samuel Shem’s immortal classic The House of God (get it, like, now if you haven’t yet — second funniest book I’ve ever read) have a humane lifestyle with a decent income: pathology, dermatology, anesthesiology, ophthalmology, radiology and psychiatry. Combine that with an MSTP full-ride grant, and even though you’re extending your training by another 4-7 years — hey, who cares, it’s fun! For the record, I was offered an MSTP grant which I turned down ’cause I realized it wasn’t for me. Also, you may have noticed the title of the article was ‘a gleefully biased rant.’ Happy to deliver exactly what I promised.
abinazir
September 24, 2011 @ 1:52 pm
Florentino — Hate to break it to ya, but most doctors are more like her than Mother Theresa. And then the harshness of the training drums the compassion out of the kind folks anyway, so there’s no point fighting it. Most important is whether she’ll be a competent doc and exercise sound judgment. In the meantime, her reason for getting into medicine is terrible.There’s only one good reason, and self-absorption ain’t it.
Alida
September 24, 2011 @ 2:36 pm
I wrote a similar four-part series in August. For those of you from the outside looking in saying it’s merely privileged whining, or that the only reason he’s unhappy is because he went in for the wrong reasons, I’d encourage you to take a look at my piece on this, which is more thorough in some aspects, and uncovers a common intellectual trap that leads people to mistakenly go into medicine: “I can, so I should.”
And to further clarify, I had hippies for parents who were actually *discouraging* me from going into medicine. Don’t be so quick to write-off Ali’s account.
My series (“Why I Walked Away From a $250,000/Year Salary”): https://plus.google.com/103765013042311928518/posts/RHDEgaA4Yrs
Hope it helps shed more light on this subject.
Thanks for this, Alida! — AB
John
September 24, 2011 @ 5:07 pm
Having passed all of my pre-clinical exams at Cambridge, I decided for almost these exact same reasons that I didn’t want to continue down the career path. What’s nice to know is that I wasn’t alone in having these opinions – I felt like I was the only one for quite some time!
David
September 24, 2011 @ 6:42 pm
After four years of med school prep, I decided not to go and instead to engineer software. I stumbled on exactly the same revelations you’ve outlined and decided it wasn’t worth the effort. What’s your take on all this, having gone through the med school process: Will it change?
Dr.Meeks
September 24, 2011 @ 7:51 pm
Good article- enlightening for some. Many comments unfortunately true- but I would not change my profession- I enjoy my work so much. I work in pediatrics so do not have the terrible side of self-inflicted conditions like tobacco/obesity/lack of exercise (or should I say- not as much!).
If this article turns you away from medicine- you probably should not go through it. I would do this job for half the pay.
Miller
September 24, 2011 @ 8:58 pm
Fer cryin’ out loud.
When guys like me become old and infirm, we don’t see doctors anymore. We’re chronic with some damn thing or the other all the time and we’re shuffled into the room with Mrs. Perfect, PA, at every visit.
She’s the doll face who has no idea who you are even though you are forced to go see her four times a year for the plenitude of meds she’d prescribed for you in addition to the blood tests that seem to be a very, very important secret (as in NSA breed of secret) because you just might go to WebMD to see how normal or abnormal you might be just because you think one’s own opinion ought to count as a 2nd in the presence of information. (And I know that just irritates the hell out you, doesn’t it?)
I never saw the inside of a hospital room until I was 50. Did I get any appreciation for that? Hell, no. I was treated that same as any LOL might be, though my plumbing was never so complicated down there as her’s might be. I can’t get a medical professional to even look me in the eye. They all act like my file is the heaviest damn thing on the face of the planet and that the words, “Tsk, tsk, tsk” can be found in a chapter by themselves in most med school texts.
So, doc, stop your pissing and moaning unless there is some sort of biological reason behind it. I don’t want to be in your office or ER any more than you don’t want me to be there. Absolutely some of my illness is self-inflicted. Be a grown up and haul my ashes over it then shake my hand and tell me you’ll see me next time. That’s what professionals do. They tell people things they’d prefer not to hear.
Pete Flick
September 25, 2011 @ 1:56 am
Indeed, THE HOUSE OF GOD – like no other book – tells the true horrors that must be suffered in the journey from civilian to physician. At one point while on the verge of a breakdown, our protagonist proclaims, “They are trying to kill me!” The inevitable and constant medical complications that can happen at any moment without warning and completely take over your life for untold hours to come: spike a fever, throw a blood cut, infect a medport, fall and break a hip or bang out a subdural hematoma. It does REALLY & TRULY feel like you are under assault by your patients, that little by little your patients are trying to destroy you.
But to go back to an earlier point, a very REAL fact about what happens to you when you put on that white coat the first day of medical school. At the ceremony of the hippocratic oath, a senior physician warned us that we were entering a new community and that over time the same experiences that would bind us to our colleagues would begin to alienate us from our old communities – friends, families, lovers, etc. Of course, I dismissed this as hyperbole even as I enjoyed the romantic fantasies of radical transformation it evoked. And yet one day years later I woke up to the sudden realization – IT WAS ALL TRUE!
Dr. Binazir’s point that the doctors-in-training would gradualy lose all of their friends from before medical school is no exaggeration or metaphor. One-by-one, little by little, those tight bonds begin to loosen. Phone calls, letters, emails get slow or no responses. Invitations are repeatedly declined due to a test (in 2 weeks…) and like the phone calls gradually diminish. They KNOW they are not going to reach you on the phone, they KNOW you are not going to be available to have a drink or go to a party and that when you do make it you are only half there either because you are exhausted or too preoccupied with classes or patients. It stops. Not out of any vindictiveness or anger or punishment but rather out of resignation and acceptance. It stops occurring to them to call or to invite you along. You have stopped being relevant. Your relationship has become something from the past…a fossil…because it stopped growing, it shrank and became ossified.
Medicine takes over your life, your body, mind and spirit. All of those interests, passions, hobbies, dreams of your youth..they get pushed aside, placed on the shelf…waiting for things to calm down or some semblance of a life to come back to you. There will be moments of longing, pangs of regret, belief in a future that will be different. But Medicine never, ever stops. You have given up for good the possibility of not being responsible, too many people depend on you to ever feel free. And those dreams, those other parts of yourself that were so valuable and so deeply valued, they grow old and brittle and rusted by neglect. Only the strongest and most disciplined among us can ever achieve that holy grail of balance.
You cannot possibly comprehend beforehand what Medicine is going to do to you. You will never ever be the same again. You gain this incredible power & priviledg
Pete Flick
September 25, 2011 @ 2:07 am
(cont’d) You gain this power and privilege, you gain the deep satisfaction of meaningful work and a life’s purpose, but you LOSE so much of yourself, you are left as a kind of half person rattling around inside this ROLE, this FUNCTION for others. I can’t imagine giving it up or giving up having the journey of becoming a doctor, but I also feel that I have been damaged by it, by medicine, medical school, residency, daily medical practice, etc. Perhaps beyond repair.
Phindi
September 25, 2011 @ 10:33 am
I hear you, and yet here I still am doing what I have come to loath. Why? Well what else can I do now
Ive already invested so much in this
My brain is fried from med school, I cannot even spell anymore
Wow cant believe now that I was so disillusioned.
DU
September 25, 2011 @ 11:37 am
I totally agree with your evaluation of medical school experience. I feel that it completely raped my soul, to the point that I have lost who I was. Since then, I have recovered, as my residency was great and now that I am working, I am my own boss and can decide how much or little I want to work. The quarter million dollar student debt does suck, but I am slowly paying it off.
Prior to going into medical school, I was a teacher and found that job much more difficult than being a doctor. It wasn’t the teaching, but the bureaucracy was deadly. Now as a family doctor, I have control over my time and work, because I am my own boss. I also have the ability to change my job over time, if I feel I am getting bored. Right now, I deliver babies, follow my own inpatients in the hospital (I live in a small city where family doctors have admitting privileges in hospitals), do surgical assists. If I feel I need a new challenge, I can get additional training in palliative care, GP oncology, geriatrics, or anything else that is required in my community and challenge myself that way. It is a fabulous job! Yes, medical school sucks, but in hindsight, it was worth it for me.
Denis
September 25, 2011 @ 12:08 pm
dropped out of medical school 1 month ago for these exact same reasons! finished my first year with an average GPA of 3.0 (B). Was doing well except of course for ALL the aforementioned reasons. Well done and i congratulate anyone who has went through a similar experience. I think most people going into medicine are really quite naive. Social standards of ” Oh shit hes a doctor” are much to greater than realistic life. Its not all its cut out to be. Now im 47k in debt but i got out in time…What am i doing now? going for nurse practitioner.. NP’s are the future of medicine. Not much malpractice, insurance pays more percentage of procedures and about 100% the same scope of practice as a family medicine doc. Dont be fooled, find out what youre going for before you make this life changing decision– ITS NOT WORTH IT.
Luigi
September 25, 2011 @ 1:36 pm
fourth year med student here to offer some counter arguments to each of the points mentioned above:
1) You will lose all the friends you had before medicine:
I agree that you will loose many of your “acquaintances” before medicine, but not your “friends.” If anything my journey through med school has allowed me to strengthen my true friendships by sharing my stories, hard times, good times, interesting cases, etc. etc. with friends and I now have a better grip on who my true friends before med school were….and they are still plenty. not to mention, you do develop some great friendships during medschool itself, just like any people who go through a challenging time together.
2) You will have difficulty sustaining a relationship and will
probably break up with or divorce your current significant other during training:
this I absolutely agree with, though for me it is not necessarily a bad thing.I enjoy short term relationships and find girls my age (mid twenties) play with their hair every time they hear I’m in medschool. to each their own I guess.
3) You will spend the best years of your life as a sleep-deprived, underpaid slave: you will be sleep deprived, and you will be underpaid. but money really does not sum up what “payment” means. there’s something to be said for that feeling you get when you intubate someone and have take over their respiratory system, there’s something to be said for being elbow deep in someone’s abdomen during a trauma case, there’s something to be said for being the first person in the world to touch a baby, and while all these can def get old after a while, I’d prefer these rewards over a 20000 bonus any day. b/c lets face it, you’re never going to be hungry, you’ll definitely have a middle to upper middle class lifestyle, and your job security is second to none.
oh and don’t forget, when you walk in to the hospital cafeteria at 5:30 a.m before rounds to get your coffee/tea, there’s someone on the other side of the counter also there at that god forsaken early hour, except they’re making 7.25/hr and everyone looks right through them.
Luigi
September 25, 2011 @ 1:47 pm
4) You will get yourself a job of dubious remuneration:
if money is #1 or #2 or your list of life goals, then I agree……do not go in to medicine.
remember, even if you make seven digits in medicine and buy that mansion, your neighbor down the road will be in the same neighborhood, his/her kids will go to the same school as your kids, except he/she owns 4 gas stations and 3 pizza places……I’m Iranian, my people are the prototype of the above millionaire.
5) You will have a job of exceptionally high liability exposure.
I do not practice and am not really qualified to talk about this, but I will say that these days as more and more docs work for HMOs or academic centers, your malpractice is covered by the organization, but again I don’t know much about this issue. not a deal maker or breaker to me anyway.
6) You will endanger your health and long-term well-being:
some of the most athletic ppl I’ve met in my life have been in medschool. about 20 ppl in my class run marathons, the rest regularly work out. I myself have lost weight since starting school (admittingly b/c of a lack of time to eat, but that’s ok, as humans we were not meant to eat this much anyway). to argue that not having time to eat is frustrating and decreases your quality of life is one thing, but to say it actually makes your unhealthy is another. although one can’t deny the sleep deprivation and its effects on the immune system.
7) You will not have time to care for patients as well as you want to:
for most fields in medicine this rings true. though fields like pathology, radiology, anesthesiology, derm, and a few others do fine.
if you can’t take care of patients as well as you want to, I think to some extent you have to change your expectations. just because one enters med school with the naive view that one can save everyone and listen to them fully, doesn’t mean you have to keep this view. time is limited for everyone, you divide it best you can, and as long as there’s no regrets it’s all good to me.
Luigi
September 25, 2011 @ 1:52 pm
8) You will start to dislike patients — and by extension, people in general: this I have felt. though after a while I mostly feel sorry for them. regardless, if you are able to have a fulfilling life outside the hospital I think all this becomes more bearable. when I know I have to go home and masturbate instead of having sex, then yeah I get frustrated more easily. but though medicine I’ve actually become much more comfortable talking to people, reading their body language, and articulating my points.
9) People who do not even know you will start to dislike you:
end of they day they need you and they know it. they wouldn’t come to your office/hospital if it was otherwise.
10) You’re not helping people nearly as much as you think:
I’m no messiah, and I don’t think any of you are either. I’m also no beauty queen. you do what you can. don’t take yourself so seriously and think you have to save the world. people are free to f-up their bodies and minds if they want to.
anyway, I’m mostly posting this in case any pre-meds are reading the blog just so they can read another perspective.
Mark Fitzgerald, Architect | LEED AP
September 25, 2011 @ 10:38 pm
OH HOW I FEEL YOUR PAIN! Just substitute the words, “Licensed Architect” wherever you find the words, “Doctor,” “Physician,” or “medical personnel” and you will feel my pain for having to endure a similar trial by fire just in order for me to design a building. And for all the training and hours of schooling that I have had to take so I can call myself an “Architect,” I now have to fight off the intrusion of non-licensed workers whenever I am searching for employment because there are IT workers out there who call themselves “Network Architects” or “Java Architects” or “Enterprise Architects” etc., etc., etc. In some State, I cannot even call myself an “Architect” if I am not licensed to practive architecture in that State. OH THE INHUMANITY OF IT ALL!
Yeah Right
September 26, 2011 @ 12:32 pm
“I am a diagnostic radiologist. Med school was tough but it was not the end of the world. i had fun in med school with a positive attitude. got laid all the time, made great friends, My attitude is what helped me be successful in my goals. Now i make around $440,000 a year, take a lot of vacations, malpractice is a pain but its not terrible. My only regret is being away from family for so long. other than that, i am straight doing it right now.”
Got laid all the time? Whatever!
cowtowncoder
September 26, 2011 @ 4:07 pm
One thing I would like to add (which is sort of mentioned in another comment) is that one big health hazard is suicide: doctors have very high suicide rates not just in US (my father is an MD in another country, we have discussed this a few times).
Base rate of attempts is bad enough in itself, but unfortunately doctors are also very able (due to training etc) to “succeed” in attempts.
DON'T TAKE SAID ADVICE
September 26, 2011 @ 10:21 pm
Why would anyone take advice from someone about being a physician when they are not a physician?
I studied engineering before going to medical school, but it would be absurd for me to tell people why they shouldn’t become an engineer. It was just a degree.
That’s all the author has — just a degree. If you haven’t dedicated your life to working as a physician then you shouldn’t being giving out advice.
This article is entertaining, but please don’t let it dissuade you from becoming a physician if that’s your goal. Talk to physicians who actually practice medicine, shadow them, volunteer at local community clinics.
It’s a very challenging field but has many rewards.
Luigi
September 27, 2011 @ 9:15 am
Dennis, going into medicine is not naive. going into medicine to acheive certain “social starndards” is, but if you go in it for the right reasons not only are you not naive, but in fact you will experience an aspect of the human condition that will humble you and familiarize you with the reality of what life for a large population is like.
NPs are, too be quite frank, a joke my friend. I have seen the most ridiculous mistakes made by midlevels. don’t get me wrong, mid levels definitly have a role to play in healthcare, but their level of knowledge is extremeley limited, and their work ethic (Which is a huge part of being a successful, observant, dedicated physician) is extremeley poor. I have “pimped” NPs and CRNAs under the disguise of “I’m just a med student, I don’t know how X and X work, can you explain it to me?” and I have gotten the most BS responses. I know their answers were BS because I actuall did know how X and X work, but just wanted to get a grasp of their knowledge.
go to NP school if you like it man, go to NP school if that is your passion and that is where you see yourself. do not got to NP school because you couldn’t handle the rough and tough of med school. this will only leave you with a sore spot later in life.
Informatica
October 1, 2011 @ 11:34 am
I landed here via Hacker News. I was surprised to reach the end of the text! I can’t believe I read all the comments too!
Another Opinion
October 1, 2011 @ 11:41 am
The decision to pursue medicine, like all important decisions, is a personal one. The author enumerates many of the well-known and thoroughly-discussed arguments against pursuing an MD. The opportunity cost of pre-medical training, 4 years of medical school, 3-7+ years of residency and/or fellowship, are obviously large. Too large for him. Other individuals who choose this path find the benefits of treating and comforting the sick, of obtaining their trust and rarely, of curing illness are much greater than what he grants. My experience has been different. I am four years into an neurosurgery residency with 3 left (and possibly a year or two of fellowship thereafter). However, although there are drawbacks and downsides, I enjoy my job. It is challenging, rewarding and unique. Occasionally, I can make a profound difference in someone’s life. For me, the chance to write a best-selling dating book in lieu of this does not engender regret. Each individual must decide for himself.
Ali B
October 1, 2011 @ 12:45 pm
Great perspective, Daniel! Right on point. Thanks for sharing.
Leslie
October 2, 2011 @ 11:18 pm
Thanks for this post. I was in my 4th year of surgical residency when my body just gave out. I had already been turned into a horrid wench by years and years of abuse and exhaustion. I was suicidal at the time, just hadn’t had the courage to go through with the act of killing myself quite yet. While at the time I was devastated–I’d wanted to be a doctor since I was a little girl–I am now so very very grateful.
Interestingly, I had dinner with a former fellow resident a few months ago. She was taking her oral boards, had been practicing in a rural community for a year, had a house, etc. I was floored when she said that she was jealous of me. She already feels trapped and miserable but sees no way out.
I have since switched my practice to acupuncture and medicinal herbs (with a little primary care here and there). My income is no where near what it would be as a surgeon, but I have my life back. I am not angry at the world anymore. I am a whole person again. I am grateful that I sustained the injuries that drove me out of surgical residency. I don’t hate people anymore and can take my time in CAM that I NEVER could in medical school or residency.
Although I agree with the comments above that knowledge is never wasted and that there are wonderful reasons to go into medicine, I have to say I wouldn’t wish the things that happened to me on any other human being. It was a cruel, cruel process and slowly bludgeons every ounce of humanity out of you. If you are considering applying to medical school, please consider very very carefully and weigh the risks because the benefits are not, in my opinion, worth the costs.
Ali B
October 3, 2011 @ 12:54 pm
Finally, the voice of reason. I don’t bring up the abject humiliation that you must endure working at the bottom of a hierarchy of sleep-deprived misanthropes, but there it is. I now do hypnotherapy, where I have a full hour (or more) to spend with every client each session. Healing is effected through the human bond between healer and patient, and much of medicine nowadays seems to believe that it can bypass that and still cure people.
EK
October 3, 2011 @ 1:53 pm
Interesting rant and comments. Obviously there is some truth to the blog or it wouldn’t have hit such a nerve. There are good and bad with medicine, as in all professions. However, there are a couple of things that make medicine a bit different from most. Besides the obvious, dealing with patients and sometimes life/death issues, there is the long time-frame and hours required for training, with relatively little pay. The cost of medicial school, as well, limits the pool to hard-working but entitled students, or to less affluent folks who then are more or less forced to go into medicine, whether they like it or not. It is not unusual to come out of 7-12 years of training with a negative worth of minus 6 figures, which, by the way, is not forgivable by bankruptcy.
I have some issue with the posts by the “pathetic” crowd above. Yes, many medical students and applicants are whiny and self-entitled, but that doesn’t mean that one can’t complain about the medical school system; otherwise it will never change. I’m sure there is a ‘gulag’ blog spot and one for political prisoners, investment bankers, etc. This blog happens to be about medicine. The oldest canard in the book is that one shouldn’t complain about things because there are people worse off than yourself, a common tactic used by oligarchies (such as the US, and yes, Cuba) to instill class complacency.
Dr. Kim
October 4, 2011 @ 8:38 pm
There’s no such thing as having it all. Everyone makes sacrifices, and you just have to pick which ones are worth making. I actually started out in the pharmaceutical industry, and otherwise probably would not have gone to medical school. It just wasn’t enough. But if I hadn’t, I would probably be a VP by now, and miserable.
Med school was a great time, and I miss those friends terribly. Almost as much as my college friends. Most friendships do fade, and you can’t make those reunions like you want to. But you pick those one or two special ones and dedicate your energy to those. Here’s the thing… that happens to everyone as we get sucked into “real life”. You think that Mr. IBanker at Goldman working 70 hours a week with two kids, wife, and house in the Hamptons is out partying it up with his college buddies? Theres’ no such thing as having it all.
Residency was the second best time of my life. Nothing beats college. Ever. But those people mean more to me than almost anyone outside of my family. Because we became family. We helped each other through everything – dying patients, unruly attendings, OR mishaps, 15 gunshots in one night. And we laughed together like I never thought possible. Residency graduation was the hardest thing ever.
I had a child in the middle of surgical residency. The timing was as right as I thought it could be. But he was four when I graduated, and I’m not quite sure how that happened. I hope I haven’t caused too much damage. But now, in breast fellowship, I’m doing my best to make it up to him. It’s been a long, exhausting road, but my life is actually getting back to “normal” now. I think he’s in shock that I’m home every night and we have breakfast together most mornings. He’s getting to know his mommy again.
We all have pain, medicine or not. You can’t have it all. But I’m well on the way to getting most of it back.
JR
October 5, 2011 @ 12:33 am
I’m so glad you wrote this. I just finished residency a little over a year ago. I do love my life now, but I don’t practice traditional hours. I work a couple of part time jobs so that I finally can have a life again. I’ve tried to dissuade so many potential pre-med students from going that route with no success. They believe “it’ll be different for me”. Heck, I believed that for the first year. They all come back later and tell me they should have listened. But hindsight is 20/20.
While I love my life now, I still say and firmly believe that if I were just finishing college and could do it over, I wouldn’t do it. The only reason to do it is as stated… it is your life goal and you can’t imagine doing anything else. Those are the only people who don’t seem bothered by the rest of the crap. Because it is all they want to do with their life. Everybody else, find something else. Life is too short (something you learn in medicine if you didn’t already know it).
A surgeon
October 5, 2011 @ 6:22 pm
Bang on.
The key point being one should not go into medicine except if there is no other possible thing in life that would provide you the satisfaction you would get doing this job. To do that you will sacrifice the best years or your life, your health, your family, and friends. To an extent you would not fathom before hand, and that no one else except those that have been thru it might understand.
The other points though are ALL valid.
I did 9 years of training including general surgery and fellowship training. Most of that was prior to certain work hour changes. Mostly working 80-130 hours a week. Missing all holidays.
The relationships you had with friends……gone….you only come in contact with folks from work.
I can count the times I have seen members of my family over that period on one hand.
I have 300k in debt don’t own a house, have a very old car, and no retirement savings.post training I make barely enough to pay for the loans that I have.
That being said in my field I see the direct result of the acts that I do. I can physically make a difference in someones life. I practice trauma surgery and critical care medicine…..and without the direct intervention of myself or my colleauges the majority of my patients would have died or have been crippled for life.
I have an MBA in finance….and most of my business school classmates will retire before I make a slight dent in my educational loans. To each his own.
Ryan Darius Partovi
October 6, 2011 @ 8:31 pm
I’m honestly surprised that I’m the first to mention this, but here goes! Toward the end of my second year of med school, I came to many of the same realizations that you have in your post. OK, to be honest, I realized them before I started, but I had the illusion that once I got in, I could change the system for the better from within. Fat chance of that! What I realized after those 2 years was that no only was there considerable inertia against any positive change in the system, the momentum behind so many of the negative realities that you and everyone else has detailed is far too great. The system as it stands currently can’t last. Fundamental changes are needed, but from where can they come when to change the system would destroy so many of the vested interests of that system?
So, I started looking for another way, and I found it in naturopathic medical school. “NaturoWHAT medical school?!” you might ask. Naturopathic medicine is a school of medicine that is focused on guiding patients toward optimum health, not simply the absence of disease. Health is defined as “freedom from limitations.” We are only as healthy as the environment in which we live: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. It is our job as physicians to assist individuals in removing the limitations from their health. We are health coaches, mentors, and guides on each person’s journey to optimizing health.
The naturopathic practice of medicine is based on six key principles:
1. Promote the healing power of nature.
2. First, do no harm. We choose therapies with the intent to keep harmful side effects to a minimum and not to suppress symptoms.
3. Treat the whole person. We recognize that a person’s health is affected by many different types of factors, including physical, mental, emotional, genetic, environmental, and social; and we consider all of these factors when choosing therapies and tailor treatment to each patient.
4. Treat the cause. We always seek to identify and treat the causes of a disease or condition, rather than its symptoms. We believe that symptoms are signs that the body is trying to fight disease, adapt to it, or recover from it.
5. Prevention is the best cure. We teach ways of living that have been shown to be most healthy and most likely to prevent illness.
6. The physician is a teacher. We consider it important to educate our patients in taking responsibility for their own health.
Just as important as having all of these principles though (which I’m sure most of you share), we believe in the importance of getting the education and taking the time with patients that’s needed to adhere to them. In the realm of education, there are currently 7 accredited naturopathic medical programs in North America, with a new campus opening up next fall in San Diego. For more information, I would encourage you to check out the Association of Accredited Naturopathic Medical Colleges at http://www.aanmc.org/ and keep the faith! Change is coming, and it is possible to be the kind of physician that you’d always imagined that you could be. I’m living proof! :-)
Ali B
October 7, 2011 @ 2:07 pm
“Breast fellowship”? Maybe I miscalculated after all.
The emergency department is my favorite place in the world. | Because the World is Round…
October 11, 2011 @ 1:32 am
[...] last week a link was passed around my medical school class on Facebook entitled “Why You Should Not Go To Medical School” written by a guy who graduated from medical school, evidently decided medicine wasn’t [...]
young medical student
October 11, 2011 @ 7:01 am
as the title suggests, this IS a biased rant.
i guess i am lucky to be studying an undergraduate med degree in my country. countries that adopt the graduate med system probably want students to have very strong foundations first, and probably think that older students will have the capacity as well as maturity for med sch. well, that’s the country’s view i guess.
knowing WHY u wanna be a doctor is very important because that will sustain u throughout your entire med journey. medical expertise and help is needed in MANY PARTS of the world, including ur own country.
i guess those that get discouraged by this post are really those people who were sitting on the fence about doing med, and you really may be better off doing something else. however, once u do med, u really shouldn’t be thinking of all these UNLESS u really are sure med isn’t what you’d like to do with your life.
i’m only year 1 in my undergrad med course, and my clinical sessions with my pediatrician tutor has already inspired me so much.
in med, there really is a lot of TEAMWORK involved. you are never alone. so no matter who it is in your team at any point in time, you will have people who stick around you. i really think this social problem/separation/wreckage of relationships is soo exaggerated. you really need one another so much in the medical profession, so how will this fragment you from your colleagues? (unless there’re politics, but that’s a different story i guess)
i guess choosing med means one is already prepared to step out of his/her comfort zones… med is really an adventure… a roller-coaster ride… we are learning new things, experiencing new things, gaining new insights/perspectives everyday. it really is a very rewarding journey if one is willing to take the paths less taken instead of staying in the comforts of one’s own home(country/city etc).
learn medicine with the big picture and big objective in mind.
do keep in mind this blog post is really a biased rant.
Ali B
October 11, 2011 @ 3:06 pm
Dear Young Medical Student — if you are doing your degree in a country where you don’t have do pre-med as an undergrad first (and accumulate $100k-$200k of debt) and then pay for medical school (another $100-$300k of debt), then the article does not really apply to you, and your experience of free medical education does not apply to Americans. Also, if you’re a first year, you don’t quite know what you’re getting yourself into yet. I rather enjoyed my first two years of med school, and it wasn’t representative of the rest of the experience. Come back here in 3-4 years, like some of the other commenters on this blog post have, and then let us know what you think.
Independant obsever with many medic friends before they dumped me for their job
October 14, 2011 @ 12:44 pm
Ali B, the only “front-line” medical profession I would ever recommend is GP or PCP (for US citizens). Hours are good, hourly rate is great. But every medic going through the system I talk to claims it is boring.
mind
October 15, 2011 @ 4:30 am
I think this article really helped me put things into perspective. I know I can get into medical school, probably graduate, and hopefully do a decent job as a doctor, but I don’t think I would enjoy it as much as being an engineer, or a teacher, or a start-up entrepreneur, or starting a non-profit. I had been trying to convince myself that I would enjoy it, trying to look past all the negative things. As a premed student, no one really ever tells you the things they don’t like about being a doctor. Everyone just seems to talk about how fabulous it is, saving lives, being the first person to hold a human, etc. All the die-hard premeds also seem to be so sure of themselves, but i’m glad, well not glad, but somehow comforted in knowing that people can, and do, sometimes regret their decision to become doctors. Everyone seems so sure of it, but I don’t know if I would ever be at that same level. I could do it, but I think I’d be just as happy, if not happier, and perhaps better at doing a few other things. Also, if all I needed was this post to be the last nail in that coffin, I probably wasn’t going to gain any satisfaction from a medical career anyway.
Thanks for the original post, and all the comments. I read all of them, and they have been 10x more helpful/insightful/honest than any other premed b.s. i’ve been subject to these past few year.
Gabrielle
October 17, 2011 @ 6:46 am
I was a medical student back in the UK (went to high school in the US), and I agree with the original post completely. I must say to the “Young medical student” that (s)he is still a happy, dreamy fellow who hasn’t seen what I’ve seen.
I decided that I wanted to become a doctor when I was three. I am twenty-two now. For 15 long years, all I did was toil for med school. I forewent prom, graduation, school dances, all those “fun things” people do in high school… just for medical school. And I got in. Yey for me.
Then med school started.
Mind you, I wanted to go into research. Still do. Medicine – as a scholarly endeavour – is fascinating. But unfortunately, people just don’t see the truth until they’re knee-deep in the mire called medical school, and by that time, you’ve invested too much of your life, money, energy, and your entire being to run away.
What was so depressing is this: I wasn’t even helping people. In fact, most of the time people died anyway. I saw three patients die during one year, and what was even more terrifying, I stopped feeling anything. My grandmother passed away a few days ago, and while I had only met her when I was a toddler, my first reaction to being awoken and hearing the news was, “aw dang it, couldn’t you leave me alone?! I was going to sleep in”. People ceased to look like people; pain was just another symptom that needed to be examined. I could not be there when my boyfriend had a mental breakdown and attempted suicide; I was far too tired, far too worn out. Knowing that my cadaver had a son, a wife, and grandchildren, we mercilessly tore him apart without much feeling, shredded him into bits to the point that he was indistinguishable from the hunk of beef sitting in a fridge.
Teamwork? What teamwork? At my medical school people were so cut-throat they’d rip out pages of textbooks so others could not use them (and since our medical school gave you a list of “suggested textbooks” that was over 40 textbooks, no way was I buying them all).. Attendings use nurses like toilet paper (from what I’ve seen), nurses treat interns like carpet and medical students are just pesky nuisances. Teamwork does not imply being with someone; it just implies you do the best you can do, or otherwise you’ll have someone else VERY pissed at you for having to wipe after your mess. You think the assistant surgeon is “there to help” the main surgeon? No! The assistant is too busy minding his own job to care about anything else. Everybody’s walking a tightrope.
So don’t write about “being there” and all that twinkle-eyed hoopla, please. I was there for three years, and by the end of it, my hair (naturally raven) had turned auburn from just not sleeping or eating. My weight had yo-yoed between dramatically underweight and regular weight. My ulcer worsened, my migraine came in waves everyday, I became photosensitive and my depression worsened. I was on a cocktail of pills. Caffeine no longer worked and I was seriously considering adderall. My boyfriend (bless him for all his patience) could just watch me spiral down into a chaotic mess. Half my friends hated me (I either didn’t have any time, or when they complained of any pain I just didn’t feel for them), half my friends pitied me. I was broke (those books are expensive). I was stressed, and that showed – clearly – in my attitude. I kept getting sick. My menstrual cycle stopped. My brain felt as if it was full of unconnected factoids about medicine (which is an indictment to British medical education. Pressure DOES NOT move, and giving me a list of “what to do when diabetes hits you” won’t help me if I get a patient with an MI AND diabetes). I read and read, and nothing seemed to make sense anymore. I guessed on my exams on histology and I aced it. I studied my rear end off for biochemistry and I barely passed. Nothing seemed to make any sense.
I am now an undergraduate at an American university, studying Physics. I am reapplying to medical school, not because I want to, but I have realised that I am not a full person unless I have those two letters after my name, a license to practise, and consigning myself to torture for the rest of my life (At least I am trying to do research, not practise!). I learn better, study better, in an orchestra; if I could change my path, I would, but I do not want to live the rest of my life seeing people in white coats and thinking “I could have been one of them”.
Medicine is not a career that “makes people survive”. It is a career in which you will see most people die (compared to any other career). I don’t know anyone who said, “I care about my patients, each and every one of them”. I have seen many say, “they’re starting to look like bags of excrement and organs”. I hate people in general; how can I, when I took pains to explain EXACTLY how to take the pills, then the patient comes back three days later, evidently not having listened to what I’ve said then screeching at me (yes, this happened in my third year. She broke my last straw)?! My health advisor told me that perhaps “I shouldn’t consider a career in medicine if you don’t like people”; unfortunately he’s a biologist, and he was never exposed to The House of God/Mount Misery type of situation.
So here are my two cents: if you are dreamy-eyed and thinking of “helping people” and saving starving children in Africa and all that, then don’t do this. You will probably see more children die than anyone else you know, and by the end of it you won’t even feel anything. The people you are trying to help will hate you and will probably try to sue you for some nonsense. You’d be lucky to see your child once a day and your spouse will find someone who cares and leave (happened to my high school friend’s parents).
If you are indeed like House, and can do NOTHING but practise medicine (I mean, he’s a mess. No social life, no social skills, no personal life, no family, no happiness), then become a doctor. There is nothing else you can do. If you’re in your twenties and spent more than half your life on this career path, you might as well as go with it and see it through because otherwise half your life would have meant nothing career-wise.
What of me? I am slowly recovering. I am still subject to hysterical outbursts, violent mood swings, insomnia, DSPS. Thankfully my boyfriend seems happy being left alone (he’s in a rigorous physics graduate program), and just as medicine is my first priority physics is his, so we suit each other well. My parents have been the most supportive; they scolded me, encouraged me, told me to live when I left med school (suicide attempt #3 and #4). I can laugh now, enjoy classes.
I remember on my white coat ceremony, the person who gave me the white coat and a pager jokingly told us that God gives all the doctors and doctors-to-be pagers and when the pagers break, we die. We all laughed then. I cannot laugh now.
Want an insight to what it’s like to be in med school? Try reading “Ah, yes, medical school”. This was a blog written by a Geffen med school students a few years ago. He writes humorously, but what he says is the same as what a lot of people said here: medicine is not a career. It becomes your life.
Do you want your job as your life?
Ali B
October 17, 2011 @ 3:56 pm
I am speechless. A brilliant cry out of the dark. Thanks for your contribution. The bit about the dehumanization of patients is particularly a propos and poignant.
MK
October 19, 2011 @ 4:57 pm
I thought the original blog post was perfect – it absolutely captured everything I’ve ever thought about medicine over the past few years. This is certainly not what I thought it would be like to be a doctor. But unfortunately I’m one of those people that could never see myself doing anything else.
I have to respond to Gabrielle’s enormously bitter comments. Sorry, but for Gabrielle to go back to medical school sounds like a horrible idea (suicide attempts and you want to go back? Seriously?). I’m more jaded than most of my peers (having been snookered into the MD/PhD Bad Deal), but I have never felt what she describes. I’ve worked the 80 hour work weeks, I’ve treated the starving babies in Africa, and I’ve watched them die like flies. I have times where I hate my life and I hate my patients, but I have never stopped caring.
Medicine is for sure not for everyone. I’m not 100% certain it’s for me either, but it most definitely is not for people like Gabrielle.
Ali B
October 19, 2011 @ 5:29 pm
Thanks for your cogent contribution, MK! Good to hear from the MD/PhDs too every once in a while, since their path, with more training but less debt (none, actually — the MSTP grant gives them a stipend), is a little different from the norm.
Dolphin
October 23, 2011 @ 8:34 pm
If only the system could take better care of those who set out to care for others. That would be a true success in health care.
Jeff
October 25, 2011 @ 1:45 am
I am currently a senior at a university and have been see-sawing for years on whether or not to go to medical school, or stick with my Finance degree and move up the ranks in pharma. Shadowing in a hospital 60 hours a week for 8 weeks was pretty great, but the educational path required to get there, not quite. I went through this list and cried a few times, and I think I have my choice now. Cheers!
Baffled Pre-Med
October 25, 2011 @ 2:58 am
Dr. Ali,
This was enlightening, entertaining, and somewhat eye-opening. I’ve been trying to reason through all of the negative side effects of getting to the title of “doctor”, all as a means to an end, but like you said, there are so many other ways to be able to “help” others. Thanks for your article, I look forward to reading more!
Luigi
October 27, 2011 @ 7:58 am
To all the premeds reading this, please do NOT get jaded by the original post and some/most of the comments that followed it.
PLEASE read my post on sept 25 that tries to shed some light on the flip side of each of the 10 points mentioned.
Medicine is definitely not for everyone, but it is one of, if not the, most unique path you can choose in your life. you will learn things about yourself you never knew before, this includes strengths and weaknesses.
I’ll try to touch briefly on the points brought up by Gabrielle here too:
-disclosure, Gabrielle I am truly sorry you had to go through all those difficult experiences, and nothing I say in this post is meant to be personal in any way. Again, I do this only for the premeds who are reading this so they can make the right decision in their life.
1) if anyone knows they want to be a doctor from the age of 3 there’s something wrong with their thought process TO BEGIN WITH. you are either not being honest with yourself, or you’re under the influence of the people around you. what 3 year old knows what a doctor really does?
2) you forwent “fun things.” if you do not find studying chemistry/physics/ethics fun, don’t go into medicine. don’t get me wrong, I too think dances, bars, etc etc are fun, but so is studying medicine and if you don’t agree with that then the decision to go into medicine for you is an easy one.
3)you say “most of the time people died anyway” and that’s why you weren’t helping them. medicine does not try to just “save” lives, but also to “improve” lives. there’s a whole field called “palliative care” fyi. to take away someone pain from metastatic cancer, is just as noble as taking out that medullary thyroid carcinoma. so don’t let people dying depress you, we will all die. rather, think of the privilege you have to be by there side, take care of their pain, be a source of solace to them and their family. I can go on and on about this……
4)people are not so cut throat in ALL medical schools. the students at my school are AWESOME. a helpful group of ppl that sticks together during hard times and gives nothing but support to each other. pre-meds take note.
5)everybody is indeed walking a tight rope. the stakes are very high. I’ve never seen anyone treated like toilet paper.
6)if you have migraines, ulcers, and depression before starting medical school/residency, take some more time to think about it. successfully getting through medical training is no walk in the park and you HAVE to have some level of physical or moral stamina to get your ass up at 4 a.m and sleep at 9 p.m the night before. when they say medicine is not for the weak, they’re not kidding.
7) “I am not a full person unless I have those two letters after my name.” this I’m sorry to say is the zenith of your mistakes.
we are all “full” people whether we have the MD behind our name or not. DO NOT go into this field if you’re trying to satisfy some ego. you’ll see nurses and midlevels that have literally 6 or 7 letter titles after their name and put in a FRACTION of your input. Gabrielle, seriously think twice about medicine. you don’t seem to be doing it for the right reasons, and after trying it once already you had photosensitivety and amenorrhea, do YOU really want to put yourself through that again? for the spot you’ll be taking in a medical school class LITERALLY thousands of people would be rejected who would LOVE to be there…..be nice.
I can really go on and on about everything else you said, but don’t want to make this post into an essay.
pre-meds: medicine is VERY difficult, medicine is not for the WEAK (both physically and emotionally), through medicine you will see things you never saw before including a lot of death (which can be beautiful if looked at from the right angle, but that’s a whole different topic), medicine will make you very humble, medicine will make you very tired, medicine will pay all your bills if you’re content with an upper middle class lifestyle.
you live once, make it worth it…..what ever that means to YOU.
Filip
October 27, 2011 @ 9:08 pm
I started off in Fine Arts school in NY in 2005, graduated in 2009 with a BS Finance, got my insurance licenses in NY, series 7, 63 blah blah blah, and wasn’t really into finance. Worked my ass off for a year in a restaurant to save and think about a good investment. I really wanted to believe in education and give it another shot. Went back into a post bacc program in spring 2011, and i’ll be done with all the pre reqs in may and take the mcat right after that. My issue is that I feel like I had to bury a part of my personality (the fun happy go lucky social part) in the backyard to get this done. I have nothing to take about with people, the only things I’ve said when I’ve been asked “whats new?” or “what have you been doing?” is studying and studying. I can’t sleep some days because of the stress of a long school day. I already have a degree and I feel like school just might not be the answer for me. I miss social interactions, dating, cooking, making and saving money and pursuing my interests that define me as a person. Im a really hard worker and live within my means and the truth is, I am going into medicine for the money. I am doing it because I am desperate, because I hate that I went to college for 4 years and than I can make more waiting tables with my personality and looks than at an entry level finance job or any entry level job for that matter. I feel a lot of the pain from other comment’s on how non-med friends encourage you as well as family but they don’t understand how it can hinder character development. I don’t think that this lifestyle is healthy for me because like I said earlier, it is…limiting my growth. I’ve just spent the last 15 months studying chem, organic chem, calculus, biology after never even taking a chem class in my life. I aced them all through hard work and determination, not because I am that intelligent. I think intelligence can often be a side effect of hard work. But In these 15 months, I don’t remember being happy very much except when I caught sleep in between semesters, or scrambled down to florida for a vacation, but even then I was studying on the plane…and couldn’t enjoy a beer on a rooftop pool in west palm beach without a biology book in my lap. I have no pleasant memories of the last 15 months, and I while everyone is proud of me for sticking it out I’ve been doubtful about whether I want this to continue. I know I said I got into medicine for the money, but let’s be honest, I’m sure there are a lot of people who have done the same. Should I quit while I’m ahead and consider finding this post a blessing?
Ali B
October 28, 2011 @ 7:18 pm
Since you asked: quit while you’re ahead. You’re in it for the wrong reasons (=dough), and you’re already suffering from being deprived of a life that’s meaningful to you even though you haven’t even really started and it’s about to get 12 times worse. Better 15 months down the wrong track than 150, bro. You may end up being good at something that’s not fun for you, but you’ll never be great at it.
Felix
November 6, 2011 @ 12:22 am
I’m a NP that is thinking about going to Med School. Oh,let me change that. I’m a NP that WAS thinking about going to med school. I’m making 85,0000.00 per year. I work for a hospice company part-time seeing patients in there homes making 125.00 per visit. I’m staying right where I am. I’m so glad I came across the site. The comment about a NP not knowing anything about X. If a resident is asking a NP a question. I’m sure the NP wouldn’t tell them the right answer, because the resident should know it
Steve
November 9, 2011 @ 10:27 am
Im a house parent for a Doc. with six kids, 2 w/ handicaps. The general public dosent have a clue. The men especially. I dont have any of the toys most men think they need, staying home without a job is just having it made, and I don’t fit in any where in conversations with men or women. I’m now an empty nester and bored with the simple life. Living on Grace and adrenalin for so many years makes normal life to easy.
I have material for a book that I’ll never write and if I did no one would read because who wants thier own life to be made out as simple and easy and thier struggles as childlike complaints.
But the flip side is the memories of changed lives. I have more than power possessions or selfish pleasure. I feel usefull beyond gaining things for myself or others. Plus satisfaction and peace that most seek through thier vices or entertainment. Life isn’t to servive but to serve.
Every life has hurt and struggle, your choice is to what end? When you are done what do you have to show for it?
Over the years students have asked us about whether or not to go to med. school. The best answer we have found is that if we could talk you out of it we would, but if you are called nothing will stop you. I’m 55 yrs. old, cronicly depressed, emotionally scared, still in debt, and yes it’s worth it.
Luigi
November 12, 2011 @ 1:23 pm
Thanks Felix! To the pre-meds reading the blog. If what Felix NP wrote two posts above rings true to you, or you think you can identify with that mindset of defining your happiness with income and “price per house visit,” then DO NOT go into medicine. Felix your post is one of the best yet, as it is the perfect example of the outlook that would be utterly disappointed with the privilege of practicing as a medical doctor.
Ahsan
November 23, 2011 @ 3:23 am
Wow Ali, this was an enlightening read. I’m Pakistani so I don’t know if you’re familiar with the expectations us Paki kids have to live up to; with my family at least, it’s pretty much doctor or bust. Obviously that presents some problems: I’m a recent college graduate with a Biology degree and have busted my ass with respects to MCAT and extracurriculars, etc. But I always find myself saying, yeah I want to do it for the prestige, the money, the job security. That isn’t to say I hate people; the feeling that you get when you help the people that genuinely need it is second to none, especially when you see how much they appreciate. However, as I have a job as a scribe in the local hospital as well, a very small percentage of patients seem like they genuinely care that you took the time from your life to save theirs, and there’s an even smaller percentage that I consider “genuinely needs the help.” Alcoholics, drug addicts, people who don’t take care of their bodies, etc etc. come to mind.
I’ve read through the whole slew of comments above, and the consensus seems that I’m in it for the wrong reasons. But I’m at a crossroads; I feel like if I give up on this career, not only will I let down my family (my father is a trauma surgeon, and mother has been pushing me down this path all my life) but I’ll also be confused as to where to go from there. The first point I believe is short-term; if I find a successful career, parents worries should be nullified. However, the second is more daunting. Any suggestions?
Once again, thank you so much for this article.
Ali B
November 23, 2011 @ 3:48 pm
Ahsan — appreciate your clear-headed look at the situation. It’s true that the deeper you get into medicine, the more spurious the ‘helping people’ argument tends to become. It’s testimony to your insight that you can see it so early in the game. Now, the issue with achievement-oriented Asian parents is real. At the same time, it’s your life, not theirs. And it sounds like you’re smart enough to do anything. Just remember that good is the enemy of great. And the list of people who would not have achieved greatness had they stayed in medicine is long. As long as you’re happy and successful, your parents will be cool. So go forth and find your calling. Build something people need. Nobody ever went wrong doing that.
Clifford
December 1, 2011 @ 1:08 am
Great post to think about…. Sort of like the movie Fight Club… If you aren’t willing to stand on the porch for a couple of days, you don’t belong… I’m a general surgeon in my mid 40′s (married to a pediatrician, two kids) My daughter asked me the other night: “Daddy, what is your dream job?” I replied..”I have my dream job”. I can’t imagine doing anything else. I believe I make a difference in peoples’ lives every day. I was an Army Officer before going to medical school, so I even enjoyed classes, ward rotations etc. Even the sleep deprivation wasn’t too bad. I wasn’t shot at once. Residency was challenging, but just ask anyone else today working two or three jobs about that.
It’s all a matter of perspective. I recently read “Mao’s Last Dancer” Amazing amount of hard work, sacrifice and ultimately some lucky breaks to become successful. Everyone today seems to expect success without hard work and sacrifice. Yes, some I-bankers make ridiculous money. I don’t think this is the norm. (some earlier referred to this syndrome… the Grass is Always Greener…) Is this a generational or cultural thing that we expect everything to be handed to us on a silver platter. Physicians may not have it great, but they have it pretty good. And it could be a whole lot worse. (and may soon be) Perhaps our national affluence is too much of a hurdle to overcome.
I agree with a previous post that someone who doesn’t and hasn’t practiced medicine should have limited influence on those interested in medicine. (note the armchair bravery of the non-combatant) Don’t get me wrong, it’s well written and has some kernels of truth, but distorts the big picture. Better advice: spend time with a community physician, or better yet… several community physicians. Most medical schools now require this. For the past two years, I have mentored undergraduate pre-meds doing rotations to satisfy this requirement. While some students come from medical families, none really has any idea about what we do on a day to day basis. Most (not all) are enthralled with the experience.
In closing, I do agree with Ali’s closing comment. If you can see yourself doing something else besides medicine, you should probably do that. Medicine is a demanding mistress with few exit points once you get started.
Ali B
December 1, 2011 @ 5:07 am
Thanks for the substantive contribution and real-life data points, Clifford. Good to hear it from the horse’s mouth.
Freelance MD
December 6, 2011 @ 7:11 pm
Ah, as the character Swedgin says in the HBO series Deadwood, “That has the f**king ring of truth”.
Unfortunately there are many medical professionals who are looking at either leaving clinical practice, or at least building something of their own on the side that can result in a rewarding lifestyle. Besides http://FreelanceMD.com where we have such a physician community with docs from Harvard, Hopkins and the like… In fact, it’s been so popular that we’ve just started http://UncommonStudentMD.com for medical schools students and residents who want to learn how to leverage a medical degree ‘outside’ of what has traditionally been a straight path. It’s possible, but to do it you have to take action outside of the main road.
Priscilla
December 7, 2011 @ 11:34 pm
I’m really happy I found this blog. I’ve been debating between becoming a Physician or a Physician’s Assistant for a while and after reading this I think I’m definitely going for PA. I know for a fact that I can’t see myself not doing Medicine. I am a typical girl who wants a loving husband, beautiful baby, and a gorgeous house; however, I am not going to wait til I’m 30-somethin years old for my life to be stable enough to even start considering that. I want to enjoy my prime years and not waste away with my eyes glued to a book or working double overtime…
Sarah
December 9, 2011 @ 1:42 am
I stumbled across this post while taking a small study break AKA procrastinating. Brilliant.
I’m a second year medical student and this really hits home. How many times can you tell yourself that the next year will get better. First you have to just get past gross anatomy, then everything is down hill. Oh wait, then there is the STEP1 (no pressure there, only going to determine the rest of your life), thennnn its all down hill. Oh waittt…third year is pretty terrible too. But at least you don’t have to study all the time right? Surely by 4th year its all down hill, besides stressing about interviews and matching and getting a good residency program. And then only 4-8 years of working your ass off, losing all your friends, relationships, and youth.
Since the first week of school I wondered if I was doing the right thing. Before starting med school, I focused so much on GETTING IN that I never actually thought about what it was going to be like once I WAS in!! No matter how many people told me how miserable it was, I always made excuses…”oh, it can’t be THAT BAD!!”. IT IS. I have already witnessed multiple relationships fail, including my own. Oh, that just means it wasn’t meant to be right? Hell no, that means that med school is ruining your life! I’m 24 years old and in the best shape and the best looking I’ll probably ever be. But that doesn’t matter because I don’t have time to go anywhere or meet anyone so I might as well be fat and ugly for all it matters. And by the time I will have time to go anywhere and meet anyone, I probably will be fat and ugly.
Well I figure I might as well finish the 2 1/2 more years and get in as much debt as possible. Then I can do whatever I want. Nothing wrong with being a housewife with an MD, right?? :)
Ali B
December 12, 2011 @ 1:29 pm
Thanks for pointing people to those resources!
Lindsey
December 14, 2011 @ 3:46 am
Hello All,
I must say this was one of the most emotional and truthful posts about medical schools I have ever read. I am currently a junior in college and I am so confused about what the heck I want to do with my life. It seems like every other day I am going back and forth about whether or not I want to go to medical school.
I hate sciences I really find no enjoyment in chemisty,biology or physics, I always thougth it will be better when I get to medical school, the subjects will be more interesting and relavent. But apparently, from this long list of comment and the orgiginal post, this is just not the case. I also find myself worrying thinking about the financial aspect of being a doctor (as far as earning potental) but of course this isn’t a good reason.
I have never been pushed by my parents, or anyone else to be a doctor but I always thought that was what I wanted to do. But from some of these horror stories I just dont know anymore. I know anything worth doing is not going to be easy, but I really dont know if the sacrifice it takes to being a doctor would be worth it for me.
I love helping people and I know I want a profession where I can do that regularly. I just feel like I would be going into medical school for all the wrong reasons. Money, prestige, feeling of and failures if im not a MD. But I also see me loving what I would be doing as a doctor (minus the sciences.
I will say this blog has shown the good and bad of chosing to go into medicine. I just wish it helped me more with my definitive decision. But I know that is ultimately up to me. Any advice to my specific situation will be greatly appreciated, I am just confused and wondering if this path is for me.
Is it realistic for me if I dont like the sciences?
Thanks to the person who wrote the original post and all the commentors. This has been so insightful to me.
jSLU
December 24, 2011 @ 6:03 am
This has been the most insightful/truthful account of medical schools that I have ever read. I am currently a sophomore in one of those guaranteed med programs (Med scholars at Saint Louis University) that require to maintain a 3.5 gpa which allows for a pretty high matriculation rate into the SLUmed. I am doing fine gpa wise but after reading all these comments on the harsh realities and living in literally a constant state of stress and expectation of high performance drives people to lose their ability to be human – or themselves. I already finding myself isolating myself from friends, family, and my activities in order to put my grades above all else. This fucking sucks – I have above a 3.8 though I guess.
I am also realizing that from all the aforementioned reasons, I want to be a doctor due to: my parents, the status, the money, the job security, and to want to help people (but seeing you begin to just view people as piles of meat and organs just destroys my hopes). And with this universal health care coming around – the money is going to be gone too. So honestly what left else is there? Lawsuits, stress, inability to cultivate yourself into who you want to be? Maybe I’m just being too negative…
Ali B
December 24, 2011 @ 3:55 pm
How do you feel about the fact that effectively NOTHING in the classes that you’re busting ass to keep that 3.8 GPA in is going to be applied in your career as a physician? Zero of organic chemistry, one concept from general chemistry (pH), zero of basic physics (unless you go into radiology or ophthalmology, in which case you have to learn real physics), and about 5% of basic biology and biochemistry (but they repeat the parts that matter in preclinical anyway). Surely there’s something better we can do with our lives than mindlessly jump though hoops like dolphins.
Alex from Medical School Success
December 26, 2011 @ 11:48 am
I am in my second year of medical school (so I’m still only in the classroom) and I have already witnessed some of the disadvantages of medical school that you have listed. People have broken up with their significant other; some even got divorced. It is hard to see many of my friends. Some of my classmates are already sleep deprived. You wrote this article in 2005 and mentioned the average debt after graduation to be $100,000. According to AAMC, the median debt for 2011 is now $162,000. So the newer doctors are going to stay broke for a longer time than before. If you are considering of applying to medical school, think about it real carefully. On the plus side, as a doctor, you’ll pretty much always have a job.
What I Go To School For « Oras at Medisina
December 27, 2011 @ 3:42 pm
[...] Why you should not go to medical school blogs.law.harvard.edu) [...]
Martin
January 3, 2012 @ 1:12 am
I read your rant. There was nothing in it that I haven’t heard before from literally dozens..approaching a hundred doctors. I have worked with and around doctors for over 15 years now and I was even married to one for over 12 years. There is ONE element that separates the doctors that seem to not be able to see the forest for the trees and the ones that can peer through and see the light and NOT be crushed by the stress that seems to come from all sides from their perspective. That singular element is emotional maturity – that emotional element born ONLY from life experience and perspective. Greater than 90% of the people that become doctors follow a very structured existence from childhood all the way to “doctorhood”. They go from elementary, junior/senior high school and on to college then immediately (or nearly so) into medical school without ever being an actual “adult” in this world. They are always living under some umbrella or safety net. While they may have had a job or two in a grocery store or working at Best Buy, they never had to make sure that all the bills were paid or their kids were fed (they WERE the kid). My point – they (the >90%) never bore the ultimate responsibility for even their own existence – how are they expected to be able to look that kind of responsibility directly in the eye for someone else’s? The ability to handle the kind of pressures that these doctors lament is only developed from life experience..and they actually possess the least of all the people in the room. Common sense is also a casualty of the all too common life course to becoming a physician so how are they going to be able to put it all into perspective?
There is one very small segment of physicians that seem to handle all that the profession throws at them and march on unscathed. They are the few that luckily squirm their way into medical school (usually D.O. school because M.D. schools won’t even look at them) AFTER having gained some life experience and real work experience. They DIDN’T major in biochemistry or some other equally useless degree pursuit (useless unless they’re headed for a career in research in that area) and they held real jobs and dealt with the real consequences of life. They were accountants, firemen, teachers and they had already put in some serious time away from their families and friends in order to get their meagerly remunerated careers going. They had to go back to school and add or retake some sciences, etc. and try to raise their GPA’s and achieve well enough on an MCAT to be considered, even if just barely. They are probably some of the finest physicians in their fields.
And, by the way, “paid slave” is an oxymoron. I know doctors practically live at the hospital during residency but I’ve never seen any other advanced training that paid so well (other training – not at all) even DURING that training and so firmly and permanently planted the brass ring in the “trainee’s” hand than medicine.
Basically, the entire essence of my “rant” is – You send a kid into a pressure cooker, s/he’s going to get crushed.
Ali B
January 3, 2012 @ 2:43 pm
That is just brilliant. Thanks for a great addition to the discussion. I’ll be speaking to some bright-eyed and bushy-tailed students in a couple of weeks, and this will inform my talks.
Eve
January 3, 2012 @ 11:29 pm
Martin is spot on!
Agree to disagree
January 5, 2012 @ 7:03 pm
RE: post #132, boy did you hit the nail right on the head. I’m a 4th year DO student applying to residencies and I’m turning 30 in a month. Yes, for all of you who believe your “prime years” are in your 20′s run and hide from this profession. I spent 4 years after graduating with a BS in Psychology finding myself. I traveled to different parts of the world after saving money working at a hedge fund for 1.5 years. Did I mention I was an administrative assistant in HR, working 14 hr days but making more than either of my blue collar parents. Had a condo in wealthy SE Connecticut and bought a car in that short time? I was making BANK, planning company parties without a limited budget and met some wonderful, brilliant people at my job… but it wasn’t my calling. I did some part time classes to fulfill my premed requirements and applied to med school. The DO schools looked much more favorably upon students who were a little bit seasoned with life experiences. The happiest classmates are those who are in their 30s, 40s and even 50s. We have a wonderful “team & family” approach and the majority are never cut-throat like some of the previous posts mentioned. Perhaps you should’ve explored the programs before jumping into “Prestige University” to get your MD or DO degree.
I would have never appreciated my struggles if I didn’t experience other things. For ex: after spending 3 months in a 3rd world country (Brazil) at a rural clinic where insurance doesn’t exist (for patients or doctors), no one should be complaining about how much we don’t get paid. I did do the make tons of money and buy nice things and party with my friends. If it’s your calling, no one, especially a blog, will pursuade you otherwise. Yes, most of the things Ali lists above are true for the majority since the majority have only experienced college and never lived it up before diving into the most challenging experience of their lives. I met my boyfriend (current intern hating his life) in med school. We keep each other afloat and find the humor in our humble lives. He is going into anesthesiology and will ultimately be happy with his life since he’s generally an optimistic person.
I’m going into Physical medicne and Rehabilitation. It’s fulfilling for me to improve the lives of young veterans with traumatic brain injuries and people with spinal cord injuries. They are the most appreciative patients and they even find the humor in life.
Take some time to do other things and explore other avenues. If you are meant to practice medicine, you’ll suck it up and make the most of the blessings people tend to overlook.
Ty
January 8, 2012 @ 1:47 am
i’m in my last year of residency. in fact, i’m the chief resident. i love medicine. no, i love the idea of medicine and my 12 yo old imagination of how i would save the world as a doctor.
but here i am. frozen. stuck 5 months from graduation, the finish line. while all of my colleagues are readily signing job contracts for the next year, 2 years, 10 years… i am nervously spanning the horizon, looking for a detour, an off-ramp, a pothole. anything but the expected finish and outcome.
and while i may not know yet what i’m going to do next… i am enjoying all the confused looks people get when they ask where i’ll be working next year, and i tell them, i’m thinking about becoming a flight attendant.
Gavin
January 8, 2012 @ 4:05 am
I went to medical school straight out of college, bringing with me a love of learning and a broad set of knowledge. I wanted to earn a MD/MPH and do something BIG.
What followed was years of depression, anxiety and anger. Instead of something BIG, I ran straight into the memorization olympics. Most of my classmates were professional memorizers (and expert whiners) who didn’t really care about science or medicine. This was an expensive, private school and most everyone were there for the career – the high paying specialties. It was hard to make friends.
After banging my head against the wall for three years, I quit the MD program. It’s been six months and I’m slowly re-integrating with society, getting my strength back, becoming my old self again. I went back to my old passion (long since thrown away) and now study science journalism at a big, broad university. Crazy that I used to think med school was a place for science lovers.
Once a week, I stop by my old med school so I can complete the MPH. I should hate the place, but I feel good when I go back, because I remember how happy I was (early on) and how I dreamed of doing something great as a physician. I also know, without a doubt, that I never want that life again.
I don’t regret going and I don’t regret leaving. I just wish I had the courage to leave sooner. Harder at 22 than at 25, I suppose. Now I have the freedom to put my ambition someplace real.
Ali B
January 8, 2012 @ 2:58 pm
Gavin — thanks for sharing. I think an MPH is one of the noblest degrees out there. You have no choice but to improve public health, and you’re doing it on a scale much larger than the one-on-one interactions of a physician. If I were to go back to school, that’s the degree I’d get.
As for thinking that physicians are interested in science — hah! There’s a small subset, like the valedictorian at my Harvard class or the MD/PhDs, who are hardcore scientists and end up doing ophthalmology or research or something. But most med students are the ones who went pre-med — in other words, they grudgingly completed the science coursework because they had to, not because they loved it.
Ali B
January 8, 2012 @ 3:02 pm
Wow. Thanks for sharing your poignant story, Ty. Just can’t imagine what that’s like — may it all work out for the best.
Mark
January 9, 2012 @ 12:08 am
I have spent the better part of the evening reading through this post and all the replies and appreciate the wide variety of perspectives and questions raised.
I went into medicine a bit late, having worked as a musician for 17 years prior to starting medical school in my late 30′s. Interestingly, I was not the elder statesman – - – there were 5 people older than me in my graduating class.
Medical school was a drain but a very rewarding experience. Relationships I made have continued to this day and I still carry fond memories of the rigors and challenges we faced individually and together. It doesn’t bother me that many of the things I needed to learn aren’t used in my day-to-day practice; while this could and should be examined and changed, I guess I was always able to keep my eye on the prize of seeing patients and building a career in medicine.
Residency, as well, was rewarding – - – more so, because we focused on the things we’d be doing in our careers. Sleep deprivation and pushing, pushing, pushing to get through the mountains of “to do’s” were the norm, but it was also thrilling to dig down deep and do the best I could.
I chose primary care because it was the best fit for me and for my personality. I truly love seeing patients . . . not *every* patient, to be sure, but I really look forward to building relationships and to being there in the way that a doctor should. We see people when they are most vulnerable, most frightened, most angry, most elated. We often share these experiences on a level which is deeper and more intimate that many family members would share with a patient.
But, medicine isn’t for everyone, that is for sure. And, medicine won’t help people find happiness. In fact, it will work against that goal. If you can do the personal work to find happiness within, then medicine can be very rewarding.
I often tell prospective physicians as well as colleagues who are struggling that they had better plan to spend as much time and energy finding life balance as they spent learning the Krebs cycle, renal physiology or keeping up with what meds are now on formulary. If doctors don’t work to find a way to balance their career, family, relationships, hobbies, etc., then medicine will be very demanding and unrelenting, and finding satisfaction will be nearly impossible.
Finally, as to the worries about being unable to see the good you’re doing or make a difference in a patient’s life, (especially as it relates to chronic disease states in the self-harming patients described in numerous earlier posts), I would counter by saying that looking for this immediate confirmation of the worth of your interaction is the wrong goal. We shouldn’t counsel patients about the dangers of hypertension with the expectation that they will do whatever we want and will agree with our recommendations without question. Furthermore, we shouldn’t look for improved outcomes as an measurement of our effectiveness (although, we should always be hoping for good outcomes, of course.)
Rather, we should measure our success by the effort we put forth, because that is really the ONLY thing we have any control over.
I remember one of my mentors in medical school, a pediatric gastroenterologist, asking me once how I would know if I had done a “good job.” I replied that I would make sure my patients liked me and that they all “did well.”
His response was amazingly curt (and it remains some of the best advice I’ve ever received): “Don’t fall into the trap of measuring you worth as a physican to a patient’s opinion of you or whether or not they get better. Instead, ask yourself, ‘did I do the very best today that I could?’. If you can answer, ‘yes’, then it has been a good day, and THAT HAS TO BE ENOUGH.”
Words to live by, not just in medicine.
unknown MD
January 9, 2012 @ 2:36 pm
Medicine is all about service….nothing left for yourself.
Ali B
January 9, 2012 @ 3:09 pm
Unless a physician takes care of herself first, she’s not in a position to take care of others. Martyrs have notoriously short careers.
Ali B
January 9, 2012 @ 3:11 pm
As Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, you are entitled to your labors, but not the fruit of your labors. Thanks for sharing the story of your unconventional career path, Mark.
Bsmalls
January 9, 2012 @ 6:43 pm
Interesting how the grass is green until someone pops on it. I think that anyone can have a bad experience with basically any endeavor you do. I can make just the same amount of arguements of friends in their thirties and older trying to figure out what the hell they are doing in life and why can’t they find greener grass. My guess is the author never had his heart into it, probably saw the big rewards without the effort. I think that life in Med School as confirmed from friends currently in Med school gives you more structure. As a full time student, full time employee and full time father…Full time med school seems like a better alternative than the current situation. I like to think, what is a good thing worth if you aren’t willing to sacrafice to get it.
Hard work, long hours, rewarding career, good salary, all part of the equation. As for PA, if you think that being a PA will eliminate your worries….I have known more PA’s who wish they would have gone to Med School instead. Long hours with a cieling salary and at the Physicians demand. You think PA’s dont take on-call, you need to check your sources. DO SHADOWING instead or read silly forums :)
Bsmalls
January 9, 2012 @ 6:57 pm
That said, I appreciate the truthful opinions of the author, truth is, not everyone will have a good experience. I am not living today for the enjoyments of my life alone, but to secure for my children and future. With the right perspective, anything you do that is hard can be accomplished. I am applying this coming June and in no way did this article sway my opinion. Bring it on.
Pat
January 16, 2012 @ 1:39 am
A well-written and thought-out piece! Medical school is a major commitment, perhaps the biggest commitment one today could make…….as such, one must exhaustively research the downside of the profession to make an intelligent decision that will not have dire punishments ahead for a wrong one made. Why are so many senior physicians today going back to school for MBA’s? Why do so few doctor’s kids go to med school anymore? Why are so many American residency positions filling with foreign med school grads?
Research first! Good luck.
Haleigh
January 17, 2012 @ 1:55 am
I am surprised that no one has mentioned pharmacy. My biggest fear in life is that I always wanted to become a Doctor and I am not following through with my “dream”.
I have an aunt that is a radiation oncologist. She LOVES her job. But she says this with such a sigh, and follows with, “life is just too short”. She is happy where she is NOW. But she sacrificed so much, and still sacrifices at the expense of her family etc. She is on call and has to go in, she is always thinking about her patients outside of work, etc. etc.
Pharmacy has changed and is continuing to change dramatically. The pharmacists are taking over what many doctors used to do and are having more patient contact. They are constantly called by the Doctors and Nurses for medication advice, and also round with the Doctors. They are needed. Of course, I am talking of hospital pharmacy, not Retail. I especially enjoy PEDS and the NICU.
I always wanted to become a pediatrician. I have the grades, I have the service/volunteering, and I have the motivation and capability to become a Doctor. Sometimes I hate the doctors that tell me “don’t do it” or “avoid it like the plague” or “it is not as glorious as people make it out to be”. If it weren’t for all I know about what might be to COME if I choose this route, I would probably be doing it.
But maybe it is a good thing that I have come to understand what a LIFE as a doctor (life literally, not just a job) is like… where med school is just the very start of it all (actually pre-med really is) and at this point you have only dipped your toe in a bucket.
I hope pharmacy fulfills my ambitions. I truly love to learn, however, I want a family, and I want to be a Doctor, but I don’t want it to take over who I am and be my life. I am going to look into the San Diego naturopathic medical program posted above and see what that entails as well.
Thanks everyone. Not really an eye opener, I have heard the rants first hand from doctors I have shadowed as well as family members in medicine. But how sad is it that choosing a career has to have all of these implications. One last thing I want to add, I like what someone said earlier about “worse things happen to better people”. Who are we to complain– it is not like the alternative is working at a fast food chain (assuming that the people posting here are qualified to become medical doctors, I doubt this is even an option).
Ana
January 17, 2012 @ 7:01 pm
I got accepted to medical school on two different years, and both years I said “no,” mostly because I already have 2 small children and I do not want them to grow up without having a mother. Also, my husband was not very supportive of me becoming a doctor, for all the reasons mentioned by Ali.
It’s been half a year since I rejected my second acceptance, I have been thinking that I may have made the wrong choice and gone into medical school. But reading posts like these help me realize just how difficult it would have been, and make me feel calmer about my decision.
What’s next – decide what to study! It’s too bad that the only thing that really, truly seems to interest me is medicine. I have been thinking about lots of alternatives – dentistry, chiropractic, NP, PA, psychologist… And have no idea. Any one else been in my shoes? Suddenly needing to decide what to do next after being accepted and not going, or quitting medicine? What did you decide and how did it turn out for you?
ambivalent
January 19, 2012 @ 3:46 pm
i have no intention of being a dick with what i’m about to say. i’m just trying to relate some truth, from the distinct vantage point of my own noggin. it might be infuriating, but as a dude with sisters, i am sympathetic to the female condition, so i feel like i have to get this out there. pardon the anonymity, but frankly, i feel like the following could get my lynched.
so i broke up with the doc i was dating. we’re both 30 now. she has a few years before “advanced maternal age” sets in. and she’s not as hot as she was in her twenties. there’s no getting around the fact that this limits the pool of guys who see her as serious relationship material. worse still, it seems like women don’t like dating younger men, or men who earn less, so the pool of men _she_ sees as serious relationship material is also greatly diminished.
somehow this ex and i have managed to keep in touch without acrimony. she’s been single since the breakup. she actually got a cat, and told me in so many words that it was because she was lonely. i feel for her. i thought i was gonna be in that situation – single at 30, FFS – but things have actually gone in a different direction for me.
since breaking up, i got a promotion, and i now have a low six figure salary. it’s not doctor money, but i’m debt free, and it’s more than sufficient. i work a stress free 40 hour week with tons of flexibility. this leaves me with plenty of cash and time to chase girls – and man, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. i’m having more success with 20 year old coeds than i did when i was 20! apparently, now that i’m educated, traveled, and in a promising career, i’m more attractive than when i sat around smoking pot and playing halo all day.
with the benefit of distance, i can see that while i was a little miffed at being out-earned by my ex, what really did us in was that i noticed my stock was rising the dating market, and i couldn’t resist the temptation. (yeah, these girls aren’t very accomplished. i’ve come to realize that professional accomplishment has NOTHING AT ALL to do with relationship satisfaction.) on top of that, i know i want a lot of kids one day (5, specifically) and, well, bottom line, it’s easier to make healthy babies with a girl in her twenties than in her thirties.
here’s the real kicker: all of my ex’s female colleagues are in a similar boat. not a one is in a successful marriage or serious relationship, and several are divorced. meanwhile, all of my friends (“bros”, yeah, i’ll cop to that) who failed to get married by 30 are having this startling realization: our dating lives are actually majorly improved over what they used to be.
the moral of the story is that medicine, as a career choice, may be disproportionately damaging to the romantic prospects for women. as ali pointed out, medical training destroys relationships. so basically, any woman who aspires to medicine has an outsized chance of being a single thirty-something. and that’s a much worse spot for women than for men (it’s actually, at least by my anecdotal experience, a pretty chill spot for guys).
i’ve proofed this comment like five times now. i still expect a digital lynch mob, but keep in mind that i’m just trying to say something that i think young women should hear, because nobody else is gonna say it. ultimately, it just corroborates ali’s main point: don’t do medicine unless you _can’t_ imagine _not_ doing it. otherwise, it just ain’t worth it.
Russ
January 20, 2012 @ 7:04 pm
Talk to some doctors who went to medical school before the 80-hour maximum work week was put into effect back in 2002. Some have told me they would be up to 80 hours by Friday.
HC
January 21, 2012 @ 6:13 am
There are so many different things wrong with this.
Granted, I understand that you are trying to be helpful to pre-medical students, but telling people that they should not pursue medicine just because it is a difficult/stressful occupation like telling them that they should just not care for someone in need if it is too costly to themselves. It is like telling a person that he should simply ignore the half-dead person on the side of the road because it is too time-consuming, risky, and expensive to help someone who is obviously in need.
If you had an awful time in medical school, then I’m sorry to hear that medicine didn’t work out for you. However, the fact that you are now trying to discourage students from attending medical school shows that you probably didn’t go into medicine for the right reasons. At the end of the day, you don’t go into medicine because you want a high salary, flexible hours, popularity, or financial security. You go into medicine because you have a genuine heart to serve people who need it.
Imagine if all the pre-medical students in the United States took your advice and decided that being a doctor was simply too difficult. Imagine that all these students decided instead to pursue other occupations simply because they were more “comfortable.”
To say medical school is tough is one thing. To discourage students from pursuing medical school merely because it is tough is another.
Ali B
January 22, 2012 @ 4:19 pm
Thanks for the comment, HC. If you were to use your analogy correctly, what I’m saying is that there’s a half-dead person on the side of the road, and he’s lying down on a mine that will explode if you move him. A medical career isn’t merely inconvenient or challenging. It can ruin your life if you’re not cut out for it. Read the comments from the actual doctors.
And, from your statement, I’m going to guess that you have no experience in medical training, which doesn’t really qualify you to comment. Idealism is one thing; reality is another.
Haleigh
January 23, 2012 @ 2:05 am
Any woman doctor out there, how difficult is it REALLY trying to balance your life? And would you do it all over again?
Deep down it is everything I want (I think I am one of the “can’t see myself doing anything else” type of people) but I am terrified because of people who say “when you’re in you can’t get out” and also say they would never do it again. I am also a shoo-in to pharmacy school. (I could care less about my salary… pharm makes as much as a pediatrician in many cases.. LOOK IT UP IT’S TRUE. Especially with a pharmD, MBA. I just want to be happy).
No one can predict the future. I just don’t want to look back with regret that I didn’t follow my dream especially if it is just the crabby overworked doctors out there who went into it for the wrong reasons that are complaining and making me change my mind.
Also, “ambivalent” … you are right that it took some guts to say just about everything you said. And shame on you. I’m sure you will find yourself a hot 20 year old who will fall in love with your success and can spit out a few babies for you. Good luck.
HC
January 23, 2012 @ 3:51 am
I appreciate your frankness, Ali. Perhaps you should change the title of this blog post to something along the lines of, “Why I hate medical school,” rather than “Why you should not go to medical school.” Provide the facts (opinions?), and allow people to decide for themselves based on a variety of experiences and correspondences whether or not they would like to go to medical school.
Big Al
January 23, 2012 @ 7:53 pm
In reply to Ana
I am now retired and some 55 years out of medical school. So, my view of things may be somewhat “dated” but not unrelated to a variety of medical experiences.
But first, I’d like to say a word about Dr. Binazir’s essay which I read not long after he first published it. At that time I had had some of the same ideas and was trying to see if others had like thoughts. His was the only thing I found then and since I have found nothing of like value. I say ‘value’ because I strongly believe it is the type of thinking that anyone going into medicine (especially for a M.D.) ought to do. This is a matter of doing what the world of business and law requires — “DUE DILIGENCE”. Before entering into a contract-like situation an individual or company should thoroughly investigate the people, companies, associations, reputations, nature of the business, etc with whom you will be associating! Such a serious and in-depth investigation is needed to be sure that what you first thought was a “good deal” is indeed a “GOOD DEAL FOR YOU – THE ONE WHO WILL HAVE TO LIVE WITH THE DEAL”. At the present time the “it’s good to go to medical school” people have near-to-exclusive access to the podium.
Dr. Binazir’s essay is his view and I generally agree with him. He is generous and is to be thanked for maintaining this page. I have some additional thoughts along this line and could elaborate if I get some indication that there is interest. I’m not interested in discussing whether or not someone ‘ought’ to go to medical school, the problems of ‘getting into medical school’, which classes to take to get in, etc. I am too, too dated for that! However, I am convinced there is a dearth of information about the negative side (past, present, and future) of a life in medicine which should be considered by an 18 year person before committing to 4 years of ‘pre-med,’ 4 years of medical school, and 4-? years of residency before “really going to work”. This may apply even to some who have close associations with family and friends in medicine. The more information, both pro and con, the better equipped to make decisions about what YOU ‘OUGHT’ or WANT TO DO. I suspect that most people entering medical school even today really do not have the foggiest idea of what life in medicine will be like.
Ana,
I don’t think of myself as an ‘adviser’ because I don’t know your current situation, desires, etc. If you have been twice accepted to medical school the odds are high that you could do the work without difficulty. You mentioned that you have two small children and that your husband was not too supportive of your returning to school. To me this sounds as if you might have your ‘plate full’. Maybe the children need you more than you need medical school. [My daughter-in-law is a speech therapist who enjoys her work but had not worked since having a children 9 and 5 years ago. Not long ago she started doing part-time relief work and has found that between home, church, children, the children’s school and some social life she fully occupied!]
The occupations you mentioned as alternates to an M.D. would possibly require a rather rigid and long education before you could work in your area and would be more of an impediment to a well balanced home life. One thing that came to mind was a two year RN program from a Junior College if such is available in your area. Since you have qualifications that are OK for two Medical Schools, you probably have many of the required courses and would the Nursing Diploma easily. This might allow to you to really get hands-on experience (either as full-time or part-time) while your children are young and let you better know if you are really want to go for the higher degrees.
Brad S
January 24, 2012 @ 12:26 pm
As a pre-med half way through undergrad, after numerous conversations and reading these, I’m starting to feel like med school isn’t right for me. I’m majoring in biology and I’ve taken a lot of the core classes for med school, spending the time to ensure a solid gpa (3.9) however, my career goals consist of mostly making money and having time for family and relationships. I originally thought I would be able to do this going to med school, my dad is a doctor and owns a private practice with plenty of free time. However he doesn’t make as much money as he should in my opinion. But he doesn’t try to persuade me against medicine.
So now I’m on course to get a degree in biology, still unsure about applying to med school. Does anyone have advice on possible alternate paths to make good money and have time for relationships/family? I was considering graduating with a biology degree then possibly going for an MBA, however I know a lot of MBA schools want work experience or PHd. Would it be worth it to try with just a BS in Biology? Not interested in working in labs or research, so what other choices does that leave for me?
thanks so much for the advice
Carmen Gutierrez, MD in 2013!
January 27, 2012 @ 1:35 am
This is a great post and I feel it is important for people to read!
I belonged to a pre-medical school sorority, where we all joined because we wanted to support each other in becoming doctors. While we were all stressed, some of us were completely miserable and for some, the pressure got to be too much. They struggled for a long time with the decision to quit the med school path. Once some of them made that simple choice, I was completely amazed at the sense of relief and peace that they exuded immediately afterward. This was the most positive and happiest I had ever known them to be! It was obviously a great choice for them and I am happy that they figured out what they wanted in time!
Today, I have classmates that are seriously questioning their decision. They have such disdain for the whole process, but they owe $125,000+ so they don’t see a way out but to graduate. I hear them say this all the time and I would hate to have them treat me, or anyone I knew! It would have been great for them to read this post so that they would know earlier what they were getting into. Many of them are really young, come to med school with credit problems, no idea of what responsibility, or what work ethic really means, and are sorely disappointed with what they find.
Some friends I have, knew what they wanted, were going for it, would be great doctors, accumulated a lot of debt in the process, but weren’t allowed to finish med school.
I think all of us in med school question our decision from time-to-time (depending on the week), but I feel for some of us, there is absolutely nothing else we can imagine doing in life when it comes down to it. There are few things in life that are as wonderful as walking into a room and seeing a family have their child back. The moment when we forget–just for a moment–all the chaos and suffering in the world. When we instead feel overwhelmed with joy at seeing one little positive thing that is finally smiling and giggling back at us after being so seriously sick! Yes there are some people who aren’t the best parents, but they are being the best person they know how to be. Some of them have a longer way to go than others, but I feel up to the challenge to try and help when I can! This profession is the icing on the cake for me and I am loving every minute of it!
I am $310,000+ debt solely due to my education, still have 1.5 more years of med school (at the tune of $80,000/year) plus 3 more years of my pediatrics residency (I think we start at 45k and have to start paying back loans), but I feel so lucky to get to “do” medicine everyday. I recognize I am a slave for the rest of my life (paying back the loans until I die), but luckily I have my partner who pays off the home we share, so that I can focus on learning and then later volunteering my medical knowledge (part-time-40 hours) to the communities that need me. The other part of my life that I will enjoy is being with my partner, watching our children grow, having us travel to help out under-developed nations and maybe even vacation somewhere nice sometime. I am living the life I have always dreamed of. I wish I had more of a social life, but the good news is that although I don’t have many friends anymore, the ones I do have are the ones I know are truly there for me–no matter what!
I wish those people who aren’t sure what they want would please take the time to consider what kind of opportunities they are taking from someone else who really wants and deserves to be here! There are some really good future doctors out there and our communities could sure use them!
Good luck in finding your path!
Triton
February 5, 2012 @ 6:49 pm
You may have a different take on it after you finish residency and actually start practicing medicine.
Amanda
February 8, 2012 @ 8:14 pm
I am assuming that was negatively directed towards medicine… you didn’t elaborate why you have that opinion though.
Janice
February 12, 2012 @ 3:27 pm
What you write is mostly true, but the medical profession is incredibly rewarding. I have a degree in Bachelor’s and Masters in Biology. After I finished my masters I wanted to go into Medical School but then decided that for me 34 years old is a bit to old so instead I’m staying with my masters and perhaps follow up with Public Health.
High School Student
February 17, 2012 @ 12:08 am
Wow this has really pulled me back and forth. Some comments agreeing some did not. I’m really confused and indecisive of being a psychiatrist. The human mind is amazing to me, even the “dark side,” and I love helping people. But I want to have a good life in my golden years…
Lala
February 17, 2012 @ 6:14 pm
Ever since I’ve been reading blogs like this by medical students, I’ve started to wonder if I really wanted to go into the medical field afterall.
I guess I’m what you’d call a premed, though my interest is really in the MD/PhD program. I chose medicine because it was my childhood dream. I honestly, honestly could not think of anything else I’d rather do. I’ve researched becoming a nurse, a PT or OT, or even a journalist or elementary school teacher; I even worked in those fields to get a feel for the setting, and I couldn’t, for the life of me, find anything that could replace being a doctor.
Then I volunteered in a hospital and got further suckered into it by the patients I helped to take care of.
But to be honest, I suck at the sciences and have no numerical talent. All the A’s I’ve pulled in those courses up to this point has been a result of my blood, sweat, and tears. I’ve learned an incredible amount of information and honed in on so many of my strengths and weaknesses in order to better prepare myself for graduate school’s rigor.
But it’s hard. I work my ass off; it’s not fun and games for me, and I’m not even a med student yet. I struggle, I cry, and sometimes, I break down and wallow. Right now, I pretty much hate this calc based physics course I’m taking; I’m pretty sure I’ve been reading the same chapters at least four times just to familiarize myself with the material. Times like this, I really have to stop and wonder what the point of all this struggling is, and most importantly, if I should go into a field where I may, in fact, end up struggling my whole life.
But at the end of the day, if I can outdo my expectations, I feel the most rewarding experience; it is something I cannot get from the arts (my natural forte), a type of thrill or exhiliration that cannot be found in social interactions or what normal people would call “fun.”
I can only imagine what saving a life, or bringing one into this world, might feel like. I bet it’s terrifying. Haha.
I still want to pursue medical school. I know it’s hard and that it may suck; the hours are long and the risks that are entailed in so many aspects of this career are really high, but I want to do my best, I want to try, and I will see where that’ll take me.
Ali B
February 22, 2012 @ 2:51 pm
Lala – So you’re saying it’s a struggle, not fun and games, potentially terrifying, and it makes you cry, break down and wallow, and you’re still thinking about doing it? And there’s something that’s your natural forte (art), and you’re neglecting that? It’s a bit like saying you’re with a guy whom you don’t like very much, scares you, beats you up, but you’re going to stay with him even though there’s a perfectly nice guy whom you love and loves you back. Courage, woman! Unless you’re a glutton for punishment and that secretly makes you happy, let go of the torture and go for real fulfillment and joy instead. ‘Cause one thing’s for sure: this road’s not going to get any easier. Quit while you’re behind.
Emily
February 24, 2012 @ 4:51 am
Anyone have a take on pharmacy? Less fulfilling… to the point where I will look back and say “I should have just done it” but instead chose pharm? I am a people person. I want to see people and help people. I jsut don’t know what to do.
UpTooLate
February 26, 2012 @ 3:03 am
Ali, thank you for the thoughtful and thought provoking rant.
As 50-year-old physician it was great to read and brought many smiles to my face. There is very little in it that can be denied and yet being an MD can still be a wonderful life. I totally identified with the ‘Lost Decade’ feeling. The 1 in 3 call induced haze that was my 20s still feels like an amazing loss to me and yet there were many rewards along the way. I can even still remember some of them! Sleep deprivation is a bitch when it comes to long-term memory consolidation. I write this at 0130h the night after being awake 26 hours straight and coming home to sleep from 9am-3pm before heading off to see my 14-year-old daughter’s hockey playoff game, having missed my son’s game due to the call the night before.
I have been lucky to have been married to an MD classmate for 20 years and have 4 wonderful children. Certainly, physician relationships can survive, in my med school class, 9 couples formed and married. 8 of the marriages are still intact 25 years on. In my office practice group there are 9 physicians, all still married to their original spouses. Pretty impressive and probably aberrant but shows that it can be done. Truly though it is hard, I spent a few hours with a classmate who went into anaesthesia last week who I have only seen 3 times in 20 years after being great friends in both undergrad and med school even though he lives only 20 minutes away! Was a wonderful visit! Hopefully they will occur more frequently.
I have been lucky enough to work and teach all over the world and I still greatly enjoy patients and the interactions I have with them. I enjoy the practice of medicine and surgery. What I don’t enjoy is the politics and intrigue of dealing with hospital administrators and others in positions of power. But such is life, it is not all roses. At the end of the day, it will have been a wonderful life. Yes, it could have been much different, perhaps better, but it could definitely have been much worse and spent in much less useful ways.
Prior to my night on call last night, I spent 3 hours tutoring a group of first year medical students. I will share your post with them. I am sure that they have considered the points you have made, and to their credit have decided to give medicine a try anyway. As far as my own children, they will make their own decisions as to whether they have the drive and desire to pursue a career in medicine. I will not be disappointed if they don’t follow in their parents’ footsteps but I know that they will have missed something special.
Thanks again for writing the rant. Great stuff. Cheers.
Ali B
February 27, 2012 @ 5:13 pm
Thanks for your contribution, UpTooLate. This is about as real as it gets. I commend you on your courage and heart.
Ben Telemon
February 29, 2012 @ 11:24 am
I’ll agree in part, disagree in part. In my fairly affluent neighborhood, my kids friends whose dads are physicians all live in nice, expensive homes with expensive cars in the driveways. I don’t think they are hurting. But I completely agree that people in the financial sector are obscenely overpaid. Physicians mostly are doing a great service to society, while wall street types simply don’t.
Elgin
March 8, 2012 @ 9:54 pm
I completely agree with this. My time as a neurosurgeon has worn me down. My health was suffering and the stress of this profession has made me realize it is not worth it. The patients see you as an enemy somehow instead of someone on their side. They are hoping to find some fault with you in order that they may profit. I am not encouraging my children to go into medicine. If you have the desire to help people, that’s fine, but I would do it through the peace corp, not by being a doctor. I have wasted the best years of my life studying as hard as I can to master an unbelievable volume of knowledge and even more studying to stay current, and for what? I don’t even care that we don’t make as much money as we did in the past. I just want to get away from the hostility and predatory behavior of the patients and their families. My plan is to become a college professor. It is the only thing I can think of with this otherwise useless education. If you love life and you want a family life, don’t go into medicine.
Screamers aren’t just a bedroom phenomenon | Doctor At Dusk
March 19, 2012 @ 8:12 pm
[...] doctor is teaching the new generation that the best thing they can do for themselves is run the hell away from this profession as fast as their sedentary little legs will carry them, so they can ignore you and say things like [...]
David
March 22, 2012 @ 3:52 pm
After reading these albeit intersting responses it is painfully apparent of the “generational ideals” that are present. To think any profession is a bed of roses is ridiculous. Medicine is no different. Quality of life for firefighters, politicians, doctors, contractors, students, and any other walk of life is difficult if not impossible. Our Hollywooed infused, greedy, material obsessed culture wants it both ways. Don’t buy the hype. Life is hard and medicine is not a “job”. Why would you go through twelve years of school just for a “job”. That’s ignorant. Any job dealing with people is impossible-hence the need for God! I am a public school teacher and by doing my job I have been sued 3X’s. That’s just part of the job. Do I think a teacher’s job is idealistic? Haha. No, it’s about survivial. A good of dose of reality I think is what this web page is about. If reality scares you, maybe you should start a weed farm and zone out like millions do everyday. It’s like marriage, it’s a commitment. Think of like this: When you’re about to die and leave this world forever, what do you want to remember about your life? In the words of Staff Sergent Webber of the USMC, “Pain is temporary, pride is forever.”
Sarah
March 25, 2012 @ 11:31 pm
I truthfully do not think you went into medicine for the right reasons . I read this article when I was premed and you terrified me. But I knew I wanted to medicine for the patient relationships. I am an OGBYN so I know all about malpractice and how bad insurance sucks and sleep deprivation I am queen of. However, I have plenty of time for family and friends. Residency was rough but Med School was okay. I now also teach at NYU and I love it. It made it all worth it. Sometimes I wonder if I should’ve skipped med school and just did PhD for free and taught. However, I do like my patient relationships, besides the ones that sue me my patients love me and treat me with respect. I do not resent humans as you said. I appreciate them and life more by being a doctor. I think being a doctor alone is stressful, I think we are underpaid. I think OBAMA IS AN IDIOT and ruining healthcare. However, once I added teaching, I had more time and pleasure for everything in my life. Med school loans can easily be paid off. Honestly everyone in my old practice takes ski trip and europe trips every year. My only regret is that I feel like I wasted my prime. Wouldve preferred med school not to eat up my 20s. Also I would suggest going to Med School in a place you love. I attended NYU and it made med school more pleasant , however it did add significantly to my debt (which I paid off in 7 years) but it was stressful during med school. Perhaps wait until residency to move to NY if you are considering.
Rebecca
April 6, 2012 @ 6:57 pm
In the trenches of surgical residency (arguably the most intense part of one’s medical career) and living it. Every day is unpredictable and challenging and high stakes, but every day I learn something new and that constant stimulation is something I don’t think I would get in any other field. Someone had a comment about seeing the forest through the trees and that is the key to survival in medicine. You have to see the whole patient but you also have to picture your future jobas an attending – which is nothing like medical school or residency.
Not only did I make more friends in these past 7 years of school and training (both in and outside of medicine), but I developed some very deep lasting relationships. With the Internet and FaceTime its easier to keep in touch than ever.
It is a marathon, and it’s not for everyone, but if you persevere you can accomplish something pretty amazing.
Michigan Orthopedic Surgery
April 10, 2012 @ 4:34 am
Long ago there was a story i read in which the doctor would live in a remote area and help people because there was nobody about who could do so. I think you need to take a break and clear your head. you already have enumerated why you think the medical profession is so lame but that is the case with most professions if you look closely. So I say do what you want to and as much you want to leave the rest. Cheers!
Indian Girl
April 26, 2012 @ 12:42 pm
I have never been more confused in my life. And then I stumbled on this article. I have resorted to countless prayers, discussing with those far and near, specialized and generalist alike.
I want prestige, financial security, fulfillment but also be able to help humanity. I love too many things – I enjoy science, I enjoy law, I enjoy the idea of running a corporation.. I am not a young chicken, I have graduated with a health degree from college over two years ago. I am currently working but not specialized in anything.
I want to have that gut feeling that says, “this is it” and just DO it. But when I move to wetting my feet, something holds me back. My strongest traits are persuasion, writing, debate, logic, creativity and compassion. You give me the remote I will immediately tune it to Discovery. You give me a stance and I will defend it. You give me a problem and I will make you see it in a way you didn’t. Give me an idea and I will present it to you in a completely new way. But I want to make sure that I help people. And medicine.. is the epitome of that isn’t it? I don’t know where that places me? I am an Indian and my family deserves to be proud of me and naturally they want a doctor. I want so bad to have the title, but from what I read that is certainly not a good reason. I am not worried about long hours or stress because I WANT to be married to my career.. because I want that to be my purpose. I am so lost, but this article did help. Any feedback on my situation would be REALLY helpful.. I need to make a decision soon..
Arthur E. Angove, D.O., Gen. Surgeon, Ret.
April 27, 2012 @ 5:18 pm
As an almost octogenarian retired general surgeon I can enjoy all the comments above. When I was fourteen I was inspired to be a medical missionary. At Westmar College my counsellor directed me to take courses that would credential me as a biology, chemistry and physics high school teacher; a pastor, and physician. I started teaching with an annual salary of $3500. After three very enjoyable years of renovating the third floor of the high school with all the most uptodate scientific equipment through a grant from the U.S. government who wanted us to catch up to the develpers of Sputnik, I studied physics at the University of Iowa where Dr. Vernor von Braun who invented the rockets that bombarded London, and Dr. Van Allen of whom the radiation belt circling the earth was named, and watched the development of the Explorer. I was going to become an M.D., but after my wife experienced a disablingly painful back condition that couldn’t be helped at the hospital in Iowa City, she wanted to see her own physician in Rochester, MN who after fifteen minutes had her laughing as she walked normally out of his office; and at no charge to her. After learning that he was a D.O. I questioned many M.D.s as to what is a D.O. As with some of the above comments I received very discouraging advice; but my real life experience told me to get my D.O. degree for which I am eternally grateful. This past weekend a beautiful princess and a shy gentle boy invited me to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Their pediatrician daughter from Florida asked me to attend the celebration of which I was their pastor for three years in Madrid, Iowa, and performed the marriage ceremony. We had two daughters while teaching, another daughter while studying osteopathic medicine in Des Moines, Iowa, where I am now a board of trustees member of the great Des Moines University. Two sons while in Surgical residency; and another daughter during my first year of surgical practice in Milwaukee, WI. My malpractice insurance policy was $1000/yr. Then suddenly $16,000/yr and at that time many surgeons questioned whether to continue doing surgery; well the last year of practice I went to the bank to borrow $104,000. to buy the policy required to practice surgery in the hospital. My first surgery in Milwaukee was an appendectomy for which I charged $170. The parents insisted on paying me in cash; and greeted me by bowing and saying: Good morning Mr. Doctor. I don’t even know what the charge for an appendectomy is now. A few years ago I did a cholecystectomy on Governor Adelberto Paz in La Clinica Medica Cristiana in Progeso, Yoro, Honduras for $75 charged by the hospital. I didn’t charge anything. My kids have often asked: Dad, why do we always go on vacation to some place where you do surgery? It’s because that’s what I enjoy doing the most! My oldest daughter Julie is a labor and delivery nurse (RNC, BSN, EFMC) and stops in to tell me excitedly: Dad, I had the most wonderful day…then proceeds to tell me the details….and they even paid me for it! I’ve been mentoring premed students from the University of Wisconsin and Marquette University and having them with me at the Surgical Morbidity/Mortality Reviews, and all have thanked me for inspiring them. A beautiful girl who could be a model came up to me at the Medical Society Foundation dinner and told me: Thank you Dr. Angove for inspiring me to become a general surgeon. That’s worth more than any amount of money. My advice to young people is to put all your resources into becoming that which is your passion and what God inspires your heart and mind to be to serve humanity. A cheerful heart is like a good medicine!
F. A. Hayek
May 4, 2012 @ 4:53 am
I wonder if OBAMACARE and/or similar governmental policies that may possibly be passed within the next 5 to 10 years may give further reason not to become a doctor. Wouldn’t salaries decrease, more of doctors’ jobs be dictated by third parties, etc., etc.? In fact, much of the stress of becoming a physician would, in my opinion, be lowered by relaxing the stringent process currently in place. In other words, licensure laws are as much to blame as anything else for the problems with the medical field today. Without them, some salaries would go down while others would go up, competition would increase, costs would be pulled down so that cost of care could become more affordable, better doctors would be rewarded better and bad doctors would have to quickly choose a different profession. People wouldn’t need someone with 12 years of education and the associated stresses to do a routine physical or fix a common ailment. The shortage of doctors would be met by more willing and able people to fill the various niches in the medical field. Perhaps some medical schools would cost less, attracting larger numbers of graduates. These ideas sound very utopian and you may say that this would cause rampant problems because anyone could practice medicine, but people need to take responsibility of themselves and find the right person for the job. It’s not like there are no mistakes in medicine even with these supposedly necessary licensure laws which are burdensome.
charann77
May 6, 2012 @ 3:31 pm
I think that all the issues you pose are legitimate, however, my father is a family physician and went to medical school while married to my mother and I am proud to say that they are still happily married 25 years later. Although he talks about those times being very difficult, he still has fond memories of his times at USC medical school. And as a family physician with his own practice he still never missed one of my ballet recitals or volleyball games. I think that it, like anything else, has to do with what you make of it. Trying to be easy going and having a sense of humor about it is extremely important. My dad tells one story where he was in residency and was working the grave yard shift the night before so got no sleep and then had to attend a lecture the next morning. The last he remembered was them turning off the lights for the slideshow and then next thing he knew his arm was soaking wet and the room was empty. It was then that he realized he fell asleep and drooled down his arm with a puddle on his desk. Its obviously exhausting but he can now look back and laugh at those times. I think he would say that the struggle was worth doing what he is passionate about. He loves his patients and the sense of pride he gets from being able to help them. I know this may seem a little idealistic but i think this is possible.
Carla
May 7, 2012 @ 1:10 am
I’m not even a doctor and I have to agree with ALL of this. I am a Certified Nursing Assistant and I am currently in school to be a Medical Assistant and Phlebotomy, but in my 6 years as a CNA, I agree with everything you just said. I don’t get to heal people or save lives per se BUT I do get the glorious task of being my residents family, I do get to spend more time with every patient, luckily for me. And when I think I’m about to give up on the medical field entirely, I have the occasional LOL tell me how much they love me, and that I am God’s gift to them. :) But thank you for the story all the same. It made me realize I am NEVER going to be a doctor. I enjoy food, sleep and the occasional stress-relieving nookie. Lol.
Ali B
May 7, 2012 @ 2:34 am
Charann77: 25 years is a long time ago, hon. This article was meant for people going into medicine today, when things are considerably different. Although it doesn’t seem like his experience was any walk in the park, either. Also, it doesn’t seem like you have any first-hand experience with medicine. You know about as much about medicine as you do about marriage: you know your dad who went through it. No substitute for experiencing it yourself.
Indian Girl
May 10, 2012 @ 3:49 pm
When some people are “born” to be doctors – what traits do they possess?
ChrisC
May 14, 2012 @ 2:18 am
I’m currently a student on a fast-track for a DPT. I have been blowing my classes out of the water and where others are struggling I am having no problems. I love everything about the human body and internal workings, even the nitty-gritty details everyone else seem to hate. That being said I’ve been considering jumping into a pre-med program. I would have no trouble being accepted but this decision has been keeping me up at night because I have my doubts if it’s the right decision for myself. Reading this put more doubts in my mind. I know if I put my mind to it I can do it, but you make it sound like it’s not even worth it. What should I do? A DPT is rewarding and I’ll be able to help people but I’m afraid it won’t be enough. I don’t want to stop learning when there is so much out there, esp when I can help people with what I learn. I don’t want to finish college/grad school and look back knowing I made the wrong decision. Any advice would be great, I would greatly appreciate it from someone who clearly knows the profession.
Ali B
May 14, 2012 @ 1:13 pm
PT is a hugely rewarding profession — my sister is one. And, I gotta tell ya, it chafes her that she’s just as smart as the docs, and she makes X amount less than them, and they call all the shots, etc etc. Then again, she’s never been a doc, so I’m sure there’d be something to groan about in that position, too. The point is you should go into any profession not because of such externalities as prestige, compensation, status or other such irrelevancies, but because YOU ENJOY DOING THE WORK AND IT GIVES YOUR LIFE MEANING. We live in these extraordinary times when we don’t have to hunt mastodon for a living, but instead can choose to sub-specialize in any number of interesting ways. So if you really enjoy working with people’s bodies and helping them heal in an absolutely tangible, rewarding way, PT is fantastic. If you like to deal with sick people every day as a physician, with all the pluses and minuses enumerated in the article, do that. But remember the only reason to go into medicine (or any other demanding profession): you enjoy doing that specific work above everything else in life. I mean, you order a burrito because you enjoy eating burritos, not because it’ll make you fart later. In the case of medicine, that work is dealing with sick people. Everything else is incidental. If that’s your calling, then do it. Keep your eyes on that, and you’ll make the right decision.
Ali B
May 14, 2012 @ 1:17 pm
Sangeeta: Ten fingers, ten toes, a tolerance for pain, and a complete lack of ego.