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[Guest Gordo58]

you think its bad now??? and your only in undergrad?? Just wait until you get into med school!! Its 10x worse. Just picture it, a class full of the hardest workers/keeners in undergrad... from all over the place... with everyone pretending they are so smart and cool when all they do is STUDY... study study study... its their life...

 

You have to really want this, i thought i wanted it, but now Im having second thoughts, dont get me wrong, i like the material we are learning and the fact that I will have a significant impact on peoples lives in the future, but its A LOT of work... Im going to say it again to emphasize it... its A LOT of work, and for me, its hard to get motivated to do it!!

 

And your life isnt over if you dont get in... you move on and do something better. I mean why do most people want to go into a medical system when there is an 8-10 month wait to get a hip replacement, or the fact that tuition in ontario schools has gone up over 200 % in the last 5 years... everyone thinks the easy solution to these problems is to increase enrollment... but does everyone know the cost? A lot of the time the government increases enrollment at med schools WITHOUT increasing training spots for post graduates (i.e. Residency)... therefore you get 1500 applicants all over Canada applying for 1440 spots... what happens to the 60 that dont get anything?

Dont tell me you want to do it because you want to 'help people', you want to 'help people'? you can do it everyday and you dont need an MD behind your name... hold the door for someone, do the dishes... blah blah blah...

 

all you people who waste away your life worrying about if your gonna be a doctor make me sick... get out, enjoy the weather, go see star wars... take up a hobby... just please stop complaining about it...

 

and thats my $0.02

[Guest wattyjl]

so gordo58 - purely out of interest, what was your attitude going into medschool? how much were you basing your future on it at the time? how much of a PMK were you then?

 

it's an obvious statement that nobody truely knows what they're going to enjoy until they're doing it, and perhaps that's your situation now. it's too bad we can't learn by mutual experience, life would be a lot easier...

 

anyway, i liked your post - it's always good to hear the other side of things.

 

james.

[Guest moo]

Dont tell me you want to do it because you want to 'help people', you want to 'help people'? you can do it everyday and you dont need an MD behind your name...

 

So true. Being a nurse, psychologist, pharmacist, school counselor, teacher, nursing aide, home health care worker are just some examples of professions that can help people.

 

If all the premeds who end up going into med school truly wanted to help people, we wouldn't have so many FP spots going unfilled each year.

[Guest leviathan]

 

If all the premeds who end up going into med school truly wanted to help people, we wouldn't have so many FP spots going unfilled each year.

You might have a point, but are you implying that you can't "help people" in other specialties besides family medicine?

[Guest coastalslacker]

Awesome Gordo, I couldn't agree more.

[Guest moo]

You might have a point, but are you implying that you can't "help people" in other specialties besides family medicine?

 

Of course not. My point is, however, that FP is probably the specialty where you do the most good, with the least compensation. When I mentioned to an ob/gyn resident who wanted to go into reproductive endocrinology that I was interested in FP she gave me a look and stated, "Oh, how noble."

 

Of course lifestyle and compensation are important and I'll be the first to admit that why I'm also interested in anesthesiology is because of that. However, the prevalent attitude of pre-medical students is what Gordo said above, when things like compensation, job security, and prestige are equally, if not more important than "helping people." Of course, there's nothing wrong with that, but you will never hear a pre-medical student say that that is why they want to be a doctor in their personal statement, whereas I'm sure more than 90% of people will write in one form or another on their PS, their desire to "help people." It's this pretentious game and BS that we had/have to play to get into medicine that bothers me, I guess.

[Guest Braveheart]

Hey guys,

 

I'm glad the hostility in this post has changed the subject to something "nicer."

 

About Linkinpark's post, I think it's totally fine the way he feels. We all feel differently when we read the posts from so many different people, all of which have different ideas and beliefs. Totally fine. I often feel the same way when I read some of those topics... but what I believe is that if it doesn't promote thoughtful discussion, then there is really no point in placing a new topic about it (afterall, it just adds to the already full forum topics that one scans through).

 

With that being said, by no means that I think it's right to be throwing personal insults about how good of a doctor one is based on what they say on the forum. There really is no point to that as well. It's funny, sometimes we feel that doctors need to be perfect people oblivious to annoyance and frustration but they too are just normal people and will often let out some steam (hopefully professionally not in front of their patients).

 

As for the point about med school being ALOT of work... well, I hope we all know that before jumping into it. I often ask myself why I am interested in medicine so much. Yes "helping people" is definitely up there.... I hope that is one of the main reasons most of us are pursuing med school. But like Gordo58 had said, we can all help people in other ways besides medicine. Hey, being a teacher is just as a rewarding experience as being a doctor- you make a huge impact in the lives of people everyday and they'll always remember you for it. But with everything considered, there are definite pluses that medicine holds that other professions have difficulty meeting- with a big one being JOB and FINANCIAL SECURITY. Hey, getting into medicine is tough and I bet it doesn't get any easier once you get in and definitely not so when you are a doctor. But isn't it nice to know that you don't need to worry about finding a job once you have completed all those years of education (unlike other degrees).

[Guest uteng]

It's an interesting way of putting it Braveheart. True, you can put yourself in a position where you'll never have to find another job, however another way of looking at it is that your your mobility can be restricted. Don't get me wrong, plenty of opportunity for docs, but not as easy to move around as in other professions: lawyer, engineer, teacher.

 

Say if my spouse found her dream job in another city (let's even say another country), as an engineer or accountant or businessman, I think I would probably have an easier time moving than say a staff physician. As a family doctor, you'd feel obliged to find a replacement to cover your patients. The opportunities are good I think, I'm just saying it's a little more difficult.

 

Also to move from one area of medicine to another requires much more training than many other professions wouldn't you agree?

[Guest leviathan]

Of course not. My point is, however, that FP is probably the specialty where you do the most good, with the least compensation. When I mentioned to an ob/gyn resident who wanted to go into reproductive endocrinology that I was interested in FP she gave me a look and stated, "Oh, how noble."

 

Of course lifestyle and compensation are important and I'll be the first to admit that why I'm also interested in anesthesiology is because of that. However, the prevalent attitude of pre-medical students is what Gordo said above, when things like compensation, job security, and prestige are equally, if not more important than "helping people." Of course, there's nothing wrong with that, but you will never hear a pre-medical student say that that is why they want to be a doctor in their personal statement, whereas I'm sure more than 90% of people will write in one form or another on their PS, their desire to "help people." It's this pretentious game and BS that we had/have to play to get into medicine that bothers me, I guess.

Gotcha, moo. I don't really want to say much about any specialties when I'm not even a med student yet, but family meds DOES sound appealing to me. I like the idea of having a patient base who you treat over a great deal of their lifespan and in a way become "close" to, rather than other specialties (especially EM) where you only see people for a short period of time while they're sick and then never see them again.