A few basic Medical-Profession questions

[Lunk23]

I'm about to turn 16 in my second year of high school and I've always wanted to be an engineer, but recently I've been watching Scrubs and was turned on to the medical profession. Now I've spent the last week doing research, and I'm aware that, for the most part it's nothing like "Scrubs", however - I'm still interested. Now that I think about it, I can't image another career that will allow me to work with and get to know people on such a level. Today, I was reading the long, "If you could, would you go back - and do it all again" post - and it seems that so many MDs find themselves depressed and cynical after a few years in the profession.
Based on what I've seen so far, IM seems like the best path for me, at least at first. Now, I have a few misconceptions about the job (I live in Canada, from what I can tell it won 't change anything significantly, but let me know if it will.)

• How hectic is life as a student and a resident? Do you have a personal life? I understand that it is very difficult, but do you have time to go to the bar and hang out once a week? Do people tend to have relationships during residency (with co-workers or otherwise)?
• Does it get much easier afterward?
• I've read many contradictory reports about break-time. Can you take a break whenever you need to? Are they scheduled? Or do you only have so much time each day?
• The one thing I think "Scrubs" is an accurate representation of is being on-call, are you literally woken up every half-hour for various trivial things?
• Are the attending helpful, or are they jackasses? I don't think I could very well get though residency without a good mentor.

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[psipsina]

I'm about to turn 16 in my second year of high school and I've always wanted to be an engineer, but recently I've been watching Scrubs and was turned on to the medical profession. Now I've spent the last week doing research, and I'm aware that, for the most part it's nothing like "Scrubs", however - I'm still interested. Now that I think about it, I can't image another career that will allow me to work with and get to know people on such a level. Today, I was reading the long, "If you could, would you go back - and do it all again" post - and it seems that so many MDs find themselves depressed and cynical after a few years in the profession.
Based on what I've seen so far, IM seems like the best path for me, at least at first. Now, I have a few misconceptions about the job (I live in Canada, from what I can tell it won 't change anything significantly, but let me know if it will.)

• How hectic is life as a student and a resident? Do you have a personal life? I understand that it is very difficult, but do you have time to go to the bar and hang out once a week? Do people tend to have relationships during residency (with co-workers or otherwise)?
• Does it get much easier afterward?
• I've read many contradictory reports about break-time. Can you take a break whenever you need to? Are they scheduled? Or do you only have so much time each day?
• The one thing I think "Scrubs" is an accurate representation of is being on-call, are you literally woken up every half-hour for various trivial things?
• Are the attending helpful, or are they jackasses? I don't think I could very well get though residency without a good mentor.

1) Some weeks no, you will not have a night to go out. Depends on your definition of personal life. People do have relationships but the success of those relationships depends on how understanding your SO is.
2) Depends on the specialty etc. There are ways to have a good amount of family time once you are out of residency and even a few residencies that are family friendly. You would want to look for specialties that have shift work and no call.
3) Um so you don't get to stop taking care of someone because its time for your break. Even working after undergrad as a research tech in a doctors office I missed lunch and worked straight thru until all the patients were seen. There are greater responsibilities as a physician than a normal job so you can't just leave whenever you want to and go get a snack. You learn to take advantage of lulls to do what needs to be done.
4) I haven't taken call yet but my understanding is that some nights you don't even get to sleep at all, that most nights you would definitely get paged a few times and that sometimes there are really slow nights. I think it depends alot on the particular range of inpatients that you are responsible or if you are on trauma call.
5) Like any other group of people there are awesome attendings who are great teachers and there are going to be jerks. Part of being an adult in any professional setting will be learning to deal with some peeps that you'd rather not have in your life.

 

[Terpskins99]

[*]How hectic is life as a student and a resident? Do you have a personal life? I understand that it is very difficult, but do you have time to go to the bar and hang out once a week? Do people tend to have relationships during residency (with co-workers or otherwise)?

As a 4th year student (which is supposed to be the most laid back year in medical school), life is still pretty busy. There is very little down time when you are at the hospital. But your time away from the hospital is yours. Most residents try to have some kind of informal get-together every month or so (the problem with arranging weekly get-togethers is scheduling, someone is always going to be on call). Plenty of dating does happen in the hospital, though nothing to the degree that you'd see on Grey's anatomy.

[*]Does it get much easier afterward?

You adjust, lets put it that way. Medical school and residency is tough. Plus it takes time to learn to be efficient with your time. But I think life improves considerably as an attending physician since at that point you have some control over your time and can delegate much of the grunt work to the rest of your teaching team.

[*]I've read many contradictory reports about break-time. Can you take a break whenever you need to? Are they scheduled? Or do you only have so much time each day?

Breaks aren't really scheduled (not even for lunch, though you will usually be given 30 minutes to 1 hour to get something to eat or attend a conference where food will be provided). For the most part, you take breaks/go-to-the-bathroom/eat-a-snack whenever you can find the time to. As I mentioned before, you always have work you need to get done at some point and most people try to get that work done as soon as possible so they can leave for home earlier.

[*]The one thing I think "Scrubs" is an accurate representation of is being on-call, are you literally woken up every half-hour for various trivial things?

Yes! Though there will be days where the hospital is pretty quiet, patients are stable and the nurses decide to give the residents a break.

[*]Are the attending helpful, or are they jackasses? I don't think I could very well get though residency without a good mentor.
[/LIST]

Well, this depends on the person of course. I've met plenty of jackass attendings. But most have been wonderful to work with. They all remember what it was like to be a resident and a medical student. MOST have the ability to sympathize with you and will try to make your life a little less miserable for you if they can.

 

[Trail Boss]

Personal life is optional.

 

[gopher22]

You could study engineering and then make a more informed decision about medical school later. Engineers are indispensable to the innovation of medicine (imaging, prosthetics, etc), and there are a handful of them (including me) in my class.

Good luck!