The hospital near me is recruiting aggressively for patient advocates. These are professionals who are the bridge between patients, paras (PT, OT, Speech), specialists, etc. So think of someone who has survived a major trauma- serious car accident. They are probably seen by 10 different types of doctors while they are in the hospital for different parts of the body/systems. And then they get sent to rehab-- and then what? So the patient advocates get hired to help map out the treatment plan, make sure the patient is being seen by the right specialists with the right frequency, make sure that whatever assisted devices are needed at discharge (ramps, wheelchairs, shower bars/chairs) are installed, etc.
Hospice- they hire people with all types of backgrounds for “hands on” care. No, you aren’t intubating someone with a DNR who is dying. But whether pastoral, counseling, music therapy… these are important hands on jobs which are neither RN’s nor MD’s.
Clinical Trials- tons of great roles, working directly with prospective patients and their families, as well as current patients who are enrolled. You are either employed by a teaching hospital or by the pharma/device company which is developing the drug/intervention being tested.
You need to explore more broadly before you conclude that only physicians work directly with the patient. You can talk about “this passion of mine” but you owe it to yourself to learn about other potential “passions”.
I do find it very strange that apparently there is a doctor shortage, and yet schools turn away such a large number of applicants over technical reasons that in many cases, have nothing to do with the actual profession.
Maybe they are just concerned that you won’t drop out because of how costly tuition is, so they only accept applicants who they know will succeed. Which can mean if you didn’t take college seriously when you were really young but want to go back to college, that can leave a stain on your record that isn’t really accurate for the student you are now.
I am a 4.0 student, if you don’t count my past GPAS and associates degree.
Med school is an extremely costly type of education to administer. It’s not just the hands-on time by professors, mentoring by senior physicians, hospital support to provide rotation slots- it’s also the opportunity cost (you could be working and earning a salary during the years you are in training). So there is zero incentive to “take a chance” on a med student who hasn’t shown years of focus, dedication, ability to absorb lots of technical information very quickly, work on limited sleep, AND who has demonstrated a solid knowledge of what actual doctors (or dentists) do all day. Not just cash their big paychecks-- but what they do all day.
You haven’t posted anything here to convince us- a bunch of laypeople- that you know what doctors do all day. So I am encouraging you to volunteer, shadow, get a healhcare job- to bolster your case that a med school should take the risk and invest in you.
Have you ever held the hand of a dying man? No? Volunteer at a hospice. Have you ever helped a disabled person take a shower? No? Get a job as an aide at a homeless shelter. Have you ever helped an elderly person understand that 15 mgs of their medication will keep them healthy, but 30 mgs could kill them-- so it’s important to take their prescription correctly. No? Shadow a social worker who does discharge planning at a rehab center.
I’m trying to encourage you- but you don’t seem to want to invest much time and attention into LEARNING what makes a good med school/dental applicant, or what the alternative, interesting careers might be.
That’s very true… there are other avenues I should have said. My sister is a child advocate at Children’s in Boston. The position required a masters degree and she put herself into a large amount of debt. For the education requirements and competitive job market, it’s one of the lower end paying jobs.
I know you don’t go into a career mainly for the salary, I understand, but that is certainly a factor I would consider. Especially if you have to live in and outside of Boston.
Ideally, I would like to enter a career choice that can eventually earn a six figure income. Nursing only requires an associates.
Your sister’s job may be low paying. But how much does the department head earn?
Check residents salaries at Boston Children’s. Those are people with MD’s-- they’ve paid for four years of med school, mostly borrowed- and they make less than your sister.
Oh I’m sure there are residencies that are willing to work for little or no pay as well. However an experienced MD averages a significantly higher salary than other healthcare professionals and can pay off their student debt relatively quickly into their career. My sister isn’t going to make much more than she is already making. For the education requirements and daily stress levels, MDs are one of the few areas of healthcare I would consider if I was given the opportunity. My sister graduated in six figures of debt and has to pay to live in Boston.
No I have zero experience in any healthcare related field. I had just assumed that you went to school before you began gaining practical experience.
Right now, I have no idea what a healthcare worker does… other than that I see a high labor demand, and seems like a solid career choice if you have the absolute passion to pursue it.
Would I have rather started at 18? Hell yeah. I’m 27 right now. I was sort of hoping my bachelors degree would count for half of med school. Again I know you’re not trying to discourage me, but it’s a lot more involved than I thought.
Plus I have ADHD. So based on your descriptions, maybe it would not be a good fit for me. Either way, I really don’t want to spend the next 10 years in school.
They turn them away because they physically do not have room for all of them, not because they are looking for picky technical reasons to dismiss their applications.
There are a number of bottlenecks in the medical education process, some of which have complex, multifactorial causes and no easy solutions–like a the hard limit on the number of residency training spaces available and the limited number of teaching hospitals available for the clinical portion of med school.
So is there any area of clinical profession that has a lower than average number of students applying? I feel like I would be more successful at choosing an area of healthcare that is underserved and unpopular. I don’t have the best educational track record. A field that would be not so competitive, but still enjoyable and important to our medical community.
If you are location restricted, perhaps a medical or dental career are not the best options for you. Med and dental school applicants apply to a median of 18 different professional schools in hopes of getting ONE acceptance. You go wherever you get accepted.
Residency positions are assigned by a computer program using an algorithm developed by a Nobel Prize winning economist so that the most people benefit from the most available positions. Residency applicants only have very limited control where they end up. Med grads are offer exactly ONE option for residency. Turn it down and you’re out of medicine permanently.
Your first job as a dentist or physician will be most often in the same region one completes their residency simply because indiviuals have developed a network of contacts and are more likely to be invited to interview since most physician and dentistry jobs are never advertised or recruited for.
I don’t understand why you thought a bachelor’s degree would count for half of med school. Med schools require their applicants to have a bachelor’s degree (any major is okay) along with specific undergraduate coursework in the sciences.
Everyone who applies to medical school has a bachelor’s degree and the pre-requisite science courses and they all have to complete the full four years of medical school.
Nursing has huge staffing shortages right now. My daughter is an ER physician. Last Saturday, she reported for her overnight shift (10pm to 6am) only to find the same nurses were still there since the morning shift (6am -2pm) because their relief failed to show up for work. Additionally, only 3 nurses were assigned to work the ER when the normal number is 7. D constantly worries about finding beds for her critical/need to be admitted patients because whole wards are closed due to a not enough nurses to staff those beds. This is true not just for her hospitals, but for all of the nearby hospitals so she can’t even find an available inpatient bed within 150 miles. (BTW, she works in a major urban center–not a podunk rural backwater.)
fwiw, D agrees that nurses are underpaid for the job they perform.
There are hidden gotchas built into that statement.
40% according to whom? The school? How do they calculate that?
UMiss SOM does not consider out of staters for admission. So you must move to Mississippi, live there, work there, and establish a permanent domicile there. That will take one year or longer before you can even consider apply. The med and dental school admission process takes more than year. (One applies in June to start school in August-Septmber of the following year.)
Are you willing to move, do everything needed to establish a permanent residence THEN take the less than 50-50 chance of getting in there?
If you want to know the ‘easiest’ med school to get accepted into–it’s in Puerto Rico. Ponce Health Sciences. Are you fluent in Spanish?
Because some of the classes will be conducted in Spanish, and almost all of the patients you’ll see during the clinical portion of your training will be mono-lingual Spanish speakers.