Is med school right for me?

Pre-Med & Medical School Careers in Medicine
1

<p>Currently I am a rising senior in highschool considering a career in medicine. Just a question for those in medicine currently, how would you know if medicine is the right career for you? What was it in you that made medicine call to you?</p>

<p>So for me, I have always had a strong interest in biology, especially brain anatomy and genetics. I'm the type of person who knows a bunch of random diseases; one friend told me she had TMJ and was incredibly surprised i knew what it was, apparently i was the first person who ever heard of it that she knew, let alone knew details about it. I genuinely love learning, jsut not usually in a school environment. I write papers and essays and read up articles about diseases and stuff for fun. </p>

<p>However, I have been pushed towards medicine from an early age. My mom has consistently held the belief that being a doctor means that you dont have to be smart, can work very short hours, and its just automatic money, all three of which i knew are not true. Unfortunately my aunt is the reason behind this belief; from my mothers perspective it seems like she somehow managed to get into family practice (she failed the medical test a lot of times before finally passing), and even when we visit her my mom constantly comments and compares herself to this doctor. My mom basically completely regrets becoming an engineer rather than a doctor, and wants to push this will onto me.</p>

<p>Therefore with this strong push on me, its hard to tell whether my interest in medicine is put upon me from her or is genuinely my calling. My ultimate goal in life right now is to help out people, and medicine seems a great path to doing that. By lending so little time, my skill (provided that I make a good doctor) could make such a huge impact on the lives of so many. This of course, is referring to aiding those in third world countries. I personally dont know what to think of the american medical system, but my impression right now is that the chances of me actually helping people are very slim (at least if i need the money to support myself, my parents, and fund trips to aid others around the world). I know that medicine for many is just a scam game. </p>

<p>Also note that my favorite subjects in school have been biology, geometry, and im guessing will be physics which i am taking next year. I also enjoy leading other people, though I am not particularly skilled at it. (truthfully though, I like almost everything). I absolutely DESPISE chem. In addition I HATE school, which at least in my area is just a competition to who can suck up the best (I learned this the hard way, got four B+'s first semester, 4 A-'s second just by sucking up). Im not sure if school is the same way in college as well. I ace sat 2's and tests like that usually (for some strange reason i dont fare well on sat 1's), but dont do so well on written tests. I have a long term memory, meaning I do much better at applying rather than just regurgitating information. This is what im most worried about.</p>

<p>So a little help please? Is medicine the right career path for me?</p>

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<p>bump
anyone have any comments on this?</p>

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<p>1) What do you WANT to do? I’m not talking about what you’re mom wants you to do, or how great you think it would be to go to 3rd world countries on medical missions and stuff, but truly, what do you want to do?</p>

<p>2) “medicine for many is just a scam game.” What do you mean by this…</p>

<p>3) If you’re after the money, medicine is NOT the way to go. Yes, once you’ve made it through, it provides a nice income for most. However, before that point, you go into insane amounts of debt (I’m one year removed from medical school graduation, and my debt is a lot closer to $200,000 than to $100,000, and I’m fairly average. And further, going into medicine sacrifices the high end money by settling for much more guaranteed income (by this I mean, in most cases if you become an MD, odds are pretty decent that you’ll make >$100k, but fairly rare that you’ll have a chance to make over $500k - compared to say law, in which there are for more extremely wealthy lawyers, but also a lot more who are struggling making only $25,000/yr).</p>

<p>4) In my opinion, medicine is ‘right’ for you if: you enjoy working with people, you like things that are relatively high stress and fast paced, you are willing to sacrifice your 20’s and early 30’s to achieve the goal, you can withstand the fact that people usually only see you when they feel awful (and are ready to be treated by them that way), that you can hold the patient’s trust while they tell you things they would never tell a spouse, parent or sibling, and you can handle the fact that you might fail on a regular basis (and when you do, it could be catastrophic). These criteria are by no means exhaustive, and certainly there are fields within medicine in which some of these things are less true than they are in others. I’ve chosen them, because when I think of things that I see my doctor friends, fellow residents and plenty of medical students struggle with. And they are things that I think most people don’t know about before they get into being premed. </p>

<p>In the end though, no amount of message board pep talk is going to make the decision for you. You have to figure it out on your own. My advice to you would be the following: just because you can’t imagine yourself as anything other than a doctor, doesn’t mean that’s what you should be. It means you need to do more career exploration.</p>

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<p>Really, the truth is, i dont know. I probably wont know until I’m midway into college what i want to do for the rest of my life. I do know, however, just from the past few days i’ve been spending at a hospital getting actual experience, watching surgeries, etc. that i love it there. I love the major rush of choas (that exists mainly because its a free hospital), watching the doctors perform their surgeries, but the for sure best part is seeing the patient smile at the end of it all, when they finally get their sight back. Its heartwrenching, absolutely…So many patients just cant be helped no matter how many surgeries they go through. When im at that hospital, im 100% convinced the medical career is right for me.
But at the same time, i think i do need to take a step back and look at myself, sometime when i get back from my trip and am a little more disconnected with medicine. </p>

<p>I remember as a freshman my absolute DREAM job was to become a brain surgeon. And now i feel the same spark being rekindled as i watch surgeons do their jobs</p>

<p>Oh and by the scam game, im referring to all the doctors (the majority im guessing) who do what they do for the money. How they treat patients as not patients, but as little dollar bill signs that stack up at the end of the day if they get through more. Those doctors who treat their practices as not a practice, but as a business. </p>

<p>My eye doctor was like this. I hate her. She’s doing well, surprisingly, as do most doctors like this.</p>

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<p>How is there a scam? They have a service, they provide what the market will pay for it, that’s capitalism. People need to eat, pay bills, etc. Physicians who work in private practice have to earn money to pay for facilities, equipment, and staff, thus the money they make is not just providing for themselves, but also affects the lives of others. </p>

<p>Further, as I’ve said, if money is all that matters, going into medicine is a fairly awful choice - you spend way more time in training, earning a fairly low salary for longer (residents and fellows earn between $44-60k/yr - with higher salaries associated with high cost of living locales - which when you’re working 80 hours a week is not very much), and take on significantly more debt than nearly ANY other profession. Having money NOW is always better than having money later (which is why the lottery gives you a much lower dollar amount if you take the lump sum instead of the annuity payment).</p>

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<p>I think you are drastically overestimating the number of doctors who see patients like that. I would argue that the bigger problem along that line of thought is patients seeing doctors as employees that should immediately dispense to them whatever their whim is at no cost to them.</p>

<p>BTW is your eye doctor an ophthalmologist or an optometrist? Optometrists are not the same thing as an MD.</p>

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<p>“They have a service, they provide what the market will pay for it, that’s capitalism. People need to eat, pay bills, etc. Physicians who work in private practice have to earn money to pay for facilities, equipment, and staff, thus the money they make is not just providing for themselves, but also affects the lives of others.”</p>

<p>I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. However, I personally believe that if a doctor loves what they are doing, and treats it as a career, not a business, their patients will be much better off, they will be happier, but maybe wont see as many a day. I dont hire my doctor to prescribe me pills</p>

<p>My eye doctor is an optometrist. I am currently observing opthamologists.</p>

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<p>Medicine is a calling and a business. You don’t have to equally like or be equally involved in both, but you must be able to acknowledge both. I have heard a number of doctors say that they would do their job for free, and I think that is a beautiful thing that I also hope that I can maintain through my career as a physician, but ultimately at the very minimum that job requires them to charge to pay the bills and the wages of others. So I sympathize with where you are coming from, as I too feel that the practice of medicine by a physician should be a calling and a passion, because medicine is half art and one can’t practice that well without passion for it. However, this does not mean that I totally reject the idea of medicine being a business as well. It’s just something that I plan to leave mostly to those who are more interested in that part of it than I. </p>

<p>The fact of the matter is that you are assuming the reason why doctors see so many patients so quickly is for financial gain. In some cases, this is true. For example, some private practice surgeons focus on quick and relatively easy surgeries that compensate well. However, for the vast majority the DEMAND to be seen is what pushes for speed. I worked with my medical school preceptor in his neurology clinic this friday and we went two hours over the listed hours of clinic because of the fact that people were lined out the door to be seen on top of the regularly scheduled appointments. Several of the more agitated patients probably would have snapped if my preceptor had decided that we should see patients twice as long in order to better practice the art.</p>

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<p>Certainly, there are also things like demand that push the market…certainly no field is this more true than pediatrics, where the supply of sub-specialists (pediatric trained specialists in cardiology, nephrology, endocrinology, rheumatology, etc…as well as child psychiatry and developmental pediatricians) are limited and concentrated at academic centers and free standing children’s hospitals. </p>

<p>I have patients who need referral to specialists and the first appointment they can get is in February of 2011 (to see a developmental pediatrician). Certainly in teh case of developmental pediatricians, the clinic visits are extensive, with an initial intake visits taking from 4-8 hours once all the educational testing is done. They DO spend the time you might think appropriate, and they see perhaps 4-5 patients a day…but the counterpoint is that it impacts the wait. They are always searching for new clinicians to add, but are limited in part too by the number of ancillary staff (Child psychologists, speech pathologists, educational testing techs, nurses) they can hire. Simpling hiring a new MD (recruiting from the limited pool of new fellowship trained doctors) does not necessarily result in increased patient capacity because of all the other people who must be involved.</p>

<p>In other fields, where the problems are more acute, more life threatening, and need more consistent regular follow up (there aren’t many autism emergencies for the developmental pediatrician to respond to), patients have to be overbooked in order to make sure the sick patients get seen and the well patients get the continued management they deserve…</p>

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<p>Hi, I’m a 1st pre-med student in France. I’m american but i grew up in the south of france. After graduating high school I wanted to return to the states, for the under-graduate program but after looking at prices I decided to try out school in france first.
I have no idea what I would like to do, there are so many options, so many things to try. In france you don’t have a year or so to decide what you like, no general program, you pick a field and go right into it.
I love science, I’ve always found it interesting and cool and I seem to be pretty good at it. It’s not what you’d call a passion, but I enjoy it.
Since school is pretty much free in France, I decided to try out the medical program, after doing some research it seemed to be the perfect thing for me, combining science, interactions with people, anthropology etc.I will also add that both my parents have been persistent that I could be a great doctor and that it would be something that I like.
So, taking their advice I enrolled.
Now the pre-med program in the States is different from the one in france, what you do in 4 or so years, we do in one, and have an exam about the equivalent of the MCAT after that first year. Out of 3000 about 300 are chosen (they can only let a certain amount pass).
I am currently in my 3rd month, and having huge difficulties, second guessing my choice. I spoken with friends and family, and I know it amounts to my decision alone, but I would appreciate any advice from other medical students.
Like I said, I don’t know if this is for me. I’m usually very competitive, when I want something, I get it. And the fact that I am not seeing this as a challenge but as long, and tiring, and not worth it, is making me very anxious.
In other words, can anyone help ?</p>

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<p>There is a lot involved with medicine beyond a doctor who schedules a lot of patients per day. The overhead costs are usually equal to 100-125% of a typical physician’s income. Therefore, a surgeon has to produce approximately $500,000 in revenue to earn $250,000. Furthermore, most physicians are employees at some point in their careers, usually when they join a group. They have to produce and schedule a lot of patients to meet the budgetary requirements of their employers. If a physician chooses to start their own practice, this has become very rare, he or she will wait 90-180 days for the reimbursements from the insurance companies. Yet, they have to pay for overhead day one. Plus over the last several decades, reimbursements have plummeted. </p>

<p>I can not agree more that pursuing medicine for wealth is absolutely crazy. But deciding on whether medicine is right fo you can wait as you mature in college and explore several majors.</p>

<p>My family prepared me to become a doctor as far back as I can remember. It was an expectation I wanted nothing to do with. I couldn’t imagine dealing with blood, pain or patients. So, I rebelled and became an engineer. Well, after taking a biology class during my senior year in college, I became hooked with biology and wanted to pursue medicine. By then I had matured as a person and student. Everything about medicine became very rewarding to me (except the business end). I continued with my pre-med after graduating college and each class made me want to learn more. That is how I decided.</p>

<p>Take your time and explore. You have a LONG way to go. But don’t beat up the physicians who are whisking you through their office. You are seeing the end result of the last 3 decades of changes in medicine and the cost of practicing medicine.</p>

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<p>While it is nice that you two are trying to help the original poster, look at the dates - she has just started her third year of college!</p>

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<p>Weird, wonder how that post even showed up on my screen. LOL! Sometimes I wish the OPs would give us updates.</p>