<p>hey-</p>
<p>i was wondering- how do you know you want to be a doctor? i'm going to start college in the fall at brown and i'm still in two minds about medicine. i really feel like i could be good at it and i'm willing to put in the effort but i dont know for sure if i could deal with the responsibility and pain of having a patient's life in my hands or seeing people who are really terribly injured. so how do you know?</p>
<p>if you dont have to ask questions like that</p>
<p>that's not to say that doctors don't get a little overwhelmed by their responsibilities sometimes.</p>
<p>As you spend more and more time in hospitals/clinical settings, you will become more and more sure.</p>
<p>Of course you're entited to have doubts. In my case, I walk into a hospital and I get overwhelmed by the amount of good that is done there. Some of my friends feel called to research labs, or courtrooms. Some of my friends are pushing to start "ethical" investment funds. It's a matter of where you feel called.</p>
<p>You have plenty of time to figure this out. There is no rush.</p>
<p>hehe i can give you greeeaaaat advice on how to know that you DON'T ever want to be a doctor! -> go volunteer at a hospital for some time, and i don't mean for a couple of weeks, i mean 4-6 months or so - that is how i decided i want to do nothing with it</p>
<p>from what I observed, the people who work at a hospital all have some kind of a barrier to keep human suffering away from touching them on deep emotional level. Sure, they will sympathize, but it goes only that far. For some it is just stress. They work so hard they don't feel anything. For others, desensitization. Some were just never very sympathetic in the first place, friendly but not compassionate ... I remember this one patient, an old woman, nearing 70s. who was just there half-seating on a bed repeating "help me, help me" a gazillion times, nearly half naked because her clothes were in disarray and she was too out of it to pull them on -- when i tried arranging the clothes on her better, the nurses lured me away saying "she's just crazy, you know". The doctor's were few, very hard to find, and always looking very stressed out. They stormed in and out the rooms, catching nearby nurses to help them transfer beds or bring some medication or other. I had little interaction with them, besides helping to hold down patients or handing a thing or two.</p>
<p>You also got to have this "doctor personality". To go or not to go depends on your abilities and intellectual preferences as well. Having a good memory helps a lot, while figuring out how things work (the underlying mechanism) is of secondary importance. Being decisive is also a benefit, whereas contemplation on the "what if's" is discouraged. Having a strong emotional backbone helps. Being able to live by a set schedule helps. Having some sort of spiritual belief might help. Being able to sleep 4-5 hours a night meanwhile staying sane for a week really really helps.</p>
<p>MD's also come in varieties. Some choose to work at hospitals with sick patients. Others choose to do medical research, which may range anywhere from medical statistics (that's how HIV was discovered) to basic molecular biology, but practically all work on human diseases and disorders. </p>
<p>I've decided for myself early on that doing research is much more fun than working to service people's health. If I was ever to be a doctor, I would not want to work with sick people at a hospital because I would feel like I'm treating symptoms instead of looking at the root of any health problem. I was much more interested in the very fundamentals of biology and chemistry than in surgery or disease diagnosis. I wanted a more creative position rather than a servicing job. True, you can do research with MD degree but then in many cases the big salary advantage is not there anymore and you're limiting yourself to research of human diseases. So for me the choice not to go to med school eventually became very clear.</p>
<p>thanks everyone for replying to my thread- especially kihyle. most of it was really helpful.
i've still not been able to make up my mind but i figure that starting my undergrad without being sure isn't that bad. i think i don't have the personality to not be affected by all the suffering and losing patients so maybe research is the way to go. or maybe something completely unrelated but lets see!</p>