No way, not a chance. But I don't really know what I would choose to do instead either. Drinking beer and watching sports just haven't made it as a career path. Like just about everyone who've posted here have said, medical school is so different in ways that are hard to explain than you could possibly imagine. There is really little resemblance between what I pictured medical school, residency, and practice to be like and the reality. At times you may feel misled. It is in some ways a bit of a trap, the med school thing, and by the time you have a grasp on it, it is too late to easily turn back. I am a little surprised how many positive responses there have been here. I can't decide if these are just better people, more naive, or folks who chose their specialties wiser. For me, the whole experience and how bizarre it really is have proven to be isolating. You simply cannot explain or complain to your friends, family, spouse about the realities of medicine and expect them to really be able to understand. Even when they listen and sympathize and seem to get it, they really don't. Try it and see. Other docs will nod knowingly, but everyone else is left out of the little club.
I can recall a clinical professor telling our class one day late in the M2 year, "You will never be as nice a person as you are right now." It has proven to be true for alot of us. That is one major reason I wouldn't do it over. In some ways, I would rather be the person I was before I went to med school, even if it was founded on ignorance and naivete. I wasn't nearly as cynical, impatient, hateful, and disinterested toward humanity in general. I didn't stay so stressed all the time. The water tasted better. The air was fresher. I wasn't so fat.
I don't see too many practicing docs who unequivocally without pause would say they would do it all over. Most don't REALLY enjoy seeing the majority of their patients; they have to see them to be able to do what it is they do for/to them. The patient happens to be the only place to find coronaries to stent, etc. Just check out the tremendous resentment clinical docs have toward those who managed to avoid the whole seeing-patients-for-a-living bit, particularly rads. Seeing patients is a terrible burden alot of the time. You cannot appreciate how many crazy, stupid, and screwed-up people are out there until you go to med school. People you wouldn't even come across on your worst day in Walmart will suddenly be there in the ER to see you. The personality pathology alone is astonishing. Reasonable, intelligent people are so rare. You truly get a different view of human nature as a doc.
People are much less respectful and appreciative in general than you probably expect. It is a business through and through. Managed care runs everything. Cookbook medicine is rampant. Forget about much intellectual stimulation. The reseach being done is mostly worthless and tainted by drug companies. Evidence-based medicine is a lie and a hoax. Administrators will drive you nuts. You get put in impossible situations all the time. Gomers really don't die, it's true. You'll send granny to a nursing homes and not even think twice about it. You'll be ordering pain meds and benzos for all sorts of losers like a waiter in some cheap restaurant. They'll demand demerol, and send it with phenergan on the side. No, don't try to substitute, look at all those drug allergies.
What was it called? The Hypocritic Oath? Something like that.
