If you could do it all again...

[Guest TheShrink]

I'm sure this is a question you get asked frequently but I need a more diverse opinion on the issue. If you could go through the process of getting into medical school, medical school, residency etc all over again would you seriously do it? I guess another way of rephrasing the question would be do I rewards outweigh the faults of the medical path?

[Guest Ian Wong]

I think it depends. As well, I can only think of one active poster here who's actually a practising physician, which will probably skew the replies you get; the rest of us are residents, med students or med school applicants.

 

I think there's a lot of cool things about and within medicine, and there are an infinite number of areas within it that could occupy anyone for their whole career. Whether that happens to be in research, or in academic teaching, or in clinical practice, the possible settings for your daily job are vast. Add to that the fact that there's literally almost certainly a specialty and practice setting that will fit your personality and goals, and hopefully allow you to help people while making a good living, and you have the framework for a wonderful profession.

 

At the same time, medicine demands a huge amount out of you. Not having been through dental school, or optometry school, or podiatry school, or nursing school, or any of the other health care professions, I think I can still say that medicine will probably push you harder than any of those other fields.

 

Running a code on a patient who is actively dying in front of your eyes, or trying to function on the wards as you approach your 30th hour without sleep, or explaining to a grieving patient's family that their loved one is likely to die within the next hour, or sticking a huge needle into someone's neck to start a central line (knowing that one of the possible complications is that you might accidentally collapse their lung), or starting a patient on medications that you've previously only read about, are all things that each and every resident (including myself) have had to go through.

 

And those are the "junior" level things! As a senior resident, you might be assisting in transplanting someone's new kidney, or helping to remove a tumour, or making a subtle call on a head CT that it's okay to use clot-busters on a patient with a stroke (where if you are wrong, they may bleed into their brain and die within minutes or hours), or diagnosing a malignant cancer from a few cells under a microscope.

 

The responsibility for someone else's life is something that each physician takes on regularly, if not multiple times each day. That is simultaneously medicine's best characteristic, as well as its worst, because of all that it implies.

 

The bottom line is that for me, I would do medicine again, with the caveat that I'd have to be going into a specialty where I'd be happy. There are specialties out there where I'm convinced I'd rather drop out of medicine than pursue those specialties as a career, just as I'm convinced that there are likely med students and residents on this forum who would rather jump off a bridge than do what I'm doing.

 

If you are interested in helping people, and are willing to undergo the financial and personal sacrifices necessary to become a practising physician, there's probably a specialty out there that will make you very happy. The real key is figuring out what that field will be for you, and then actually matching into it.

 

Ian

[Guest atworknow]

Ian, this is a good piece of advice.

 

Would you mind sharing with us what specialty are you doing right now as a resident? It sounds quite challenging, though.

 

Thanks.

[Guest jmh2005]

I'm only a first year resident, but if I had to do med school all over again, I would do it in a heart beat...you'll always have good days and bad, but i couldn't see myself doing anything else!

 

PS...Ian is doing Radiology in the US

[Guest DrSahsi]

I think the fact that Ian hasn't explicitly stated which residency he is currently pursuing is appropriate. His words ring true for medical trainees regardless of specialty. Everyone going through medical training ends up in many of the situations he has described at some point. Most will end up making a career of it.

 

When we graduated from our residency, each of my colleagues received a leather-wrapped hip flask (for booze) with our name and new letters (CCFP-EM) engraved on it. I recall one of my mentors saying something along the lines of "you're going to be in this business for a while, so you might as well get started."

 

I have met a disturbingly large number of people in various stages of their medical training who regret the path they have followed. Some utter these sentiments in the middle of the night, or after too many shifts in a row, or once sleep deprived and disinhibited after being on call yet again. Some just need to blow off steam, but many talk with a nasty undercurrent of sincerity.

 

Being a physician isn't always as glamorous as many people would have you believe. When potential applicants seek me out for advice, the best thing I feel I can possibly tell them is to make absolutely for damn sure that they know what they're getting in to by applying: good, bad, and ugly. Because once you're in (for the most part) you're not turning back. Your life will change, and not all of those changes are positive. Most people are unprepared for this reality until they find themselves right smack in the middle of it. If you're going to apply, just make sure you're doing so with your eyes open. Hopefully, medicine is exactly the thing for you.

 

I consider myself fortunate that I'm now doing a job that I more or less enjoy. There are not a lot of people -- physicians or otherwise -- who are able to say that. If I had to do it over again, I would. But that's just speaking for myself.

 

[-RSS]

[Guest TheShrink]

Awesome! Thanks for the replies, serious food for thought.

[Guest Littlest Zooropa]

I agree wholeheartly with everything said previously. To reiterate for emphasis:

 

MAKE SURE YOU CHOOSE A SPECIALTY YOU LOVE.

 

I'm an R3, and I've seen a couple of people undergo "Real Genius" meltdowns (if you're old enough to have had a meaningful relationship with this [and other fun cheesy '80's] movies, then you know what I mean).

 

And it always boiled down to the same problem: the specialty they chose didn't provide them with what they wanted out of life. Make sure you're picking your specialty for the right reason - because you want to spend MOST of the rest of your life doing this.

 

DO NOT (I repeat) DO NOT get suckered into something because of prestige or money. Don't get me wrong, prestige and money are great, but they won't make up for hating each and every working hour until you die (or retire).

 

Anyways, to answer the question actually posed:

 

No, if I had to choose again, I wouldn't enter medical school and I wouldn't be a doctor. I enjoyed my pre-med career and pre-med life better than my post-med career and post-med life, and I think I was probably a better person (I had a robust bank account and a lot fewer atherosclerotic plaques, for sure).

 

BUT that doesn't mean I'm not enjoying what I'm doing, and that doesn't mean I'm going to bag the whole medicine thing anytime soon. I am enjoying what I'm doing, and I've managed to carve myself out a cozy little specialty niche that suits me just fine.

 

So, the moral of my story is that even if you don't turn out to be one of these I-was-meant-by-God-to-be-a-doctor-and-couldn't-ever-have-done-anything-else people, almost everyone eventually finds an area of medicine that seems just right for them. So if you want to try being a doctor, don't worry too much - medicine is such an immense and varied field that there is enough in it for everyone to find satisfaction.

[Guest marbledust]

I'm an R3, and I've seen a couple of people undergo "Real Genius" meltdowns (if you're old enough to have had a meaningful relationship with this [and other fun cheesy '80's] movies, then you know what I mean).

 

Allow me a geek moment :lol

 

I loved that movie! It's been forever since I've seen it...so long since my last "80's film festival weekend." I can't remember how the line goes, something like: My condolences on your meltdown. I'm not saying you had one, but just in case you do. (paraphrased).

 

80's teen movies are the best! I just may have to rent "Real Genius" from my favorite vintage video store this weekend

[Guest McMastergirl]

I would do it again. I really struggled with the decision to apply way back when, but once I did it, I never looked back. I think I was old enough and mature enough at the time to weigh the pros and cons realistically. I often wonder if those people who got into med school right out of undergrad are more likely to regret their choice?