Don't Really Want to be a Doctor...

[glycolysisman]

Hey guys, long time lurker here.

I know it's probably unlikely, but I was just wondering how many of you don't really want to be a doctor or know someone in medical school who doesn't want to be a doctor. I've had this feeling for awhile and want to know what others that have been in my situation have done.

I'm 97% sure I got into it for all the wrong reasons, I hate all of my classes since I am totally uninterested in most (if not all) of the subject matter and when looking at lists of specialties, nothing seems even remotely interesting. I don't think third year will be "better" for me like upperclassmen keep saying, because I really don't want to be in a hospital all day.

I always planned on being a doctor, gathering funds for something I actually would enjoy. But this lack of motivation won't get me through Step 1 of that plan or of the Boards.

What do I do now?

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[cpants]

Hey guys, long time lurker here.

I know it's probably unlikely, but I was just wondering how many of you don't really want to be a doctor or know someone in medical school who doesn't want to be a doctor. I've had this feeling for awhile and want to know what others that have been in my situation have done.

I'm 97% sure I got into it for all the wrong reasons, I hate all of my classes since I am totally uninterested in most (if not all) of the subject matter and when looking at lists of specialties, nothing seems even remotely interesting. I don't think third year will be "better" for me like upperclassmen keep saying, because I really don't want to be in a hospital all day.

I always planned on being a doctor, gathering funds for something I actually would enjoy. But this lack of motivation won't get me through Step 1 of that plan or of the Boards.

What do I do now?

Try to get some clinical experience ASAP. That is a lot more like what being a doctor really is than basic science classes. Consider a leave of absence for next semester to figure this out. The important thing is to figure out if you made the wrong call before you take on more debt, and if that is the case, to get out without taking more debt. One semester in, you haven't borrowed that much, and it will be relatively easy to start a new career. Just don't wait until end of fourth year or residency to come to this realization.

 

[adaptation1]

.

 

[Rendar5]

If it is only a job for you (as in only a means to a paycheck and not more meaningful to you than any other job you could take) and a way to gather funds for your other pursuits, please rethink things and make sure that it doesn't mean anything mroe to you once you get some clinical experience under your belt (and you can do this as an M1).

Because it's simply not that great a job for the investment that's required of it. You're looking at a $1,000,000 investment in terms of money spent on education, money in loan interest, not receiving a paycheck at all until your late 20's, only receiving stipdend until your 30's, complete loss of the first 10 years of your retirmenet savings. Add up everything, not just the cost of your loans, and you'll see that it really does add up over the lifetime. Eventually you'll catch up by your 50's, and surpass others if you're smart with your money by the time of retirement, but that's a lot of years to come out even. That's what you're losing by going to med school simply for a paycheck and nothing more.

Not to mention, do you really want to work 80 hour weeks to earn what all your friends are earning doing 40 hour weeks during residency and after?

Seriously, there's gotta be more than a paycheck for you, even if it's just personal fulfillment or respect or earning chick magnet status or something =p. If not, seriously, get out now and find yourself another career and another job. You'll thank yourself in 10 years when you suddenly have a lot of things and a lot more free time than your friends who went down the path of medicine..

 

[Knicks]

If it is only a job for you (as in only a means to a paycheck and not more meaningful to you than any other job you could take) and a way to gather funds for your other pursuits, please rethink things and make sure that it doesn't mean anything mroe to you once you get some clinical experience under your belt (and you can do this as an M1).

Because it's simply not that great a job for the investment that's required of it. You're looking at a $1,000,000 investment in terms of money spent on education, money in loan interest, not receiving a paycheck at all until your late 20's, only receiving stipdend until your 30's, complete loss of the first 10 years of your retirmenet savings. Add up everything, not just the cost of your loans, and you'll see that it really does add up over the lifetime. Eventually you'll catch up by your 50's, and surpass others if you're smart with your money by the time of retirement, but that's a lot of years to come out even. That's what you're losing by going to med school simply for a paycheck and nothing more.

Not to mention, do you really want to work 80 hour weeks to earn what all your friends are earning doing 40 hour weeks during residency and after?

Seriously, there's gotta be more than a paycheck for you, even if it's just personal fulfillment or respect or earning chick magnet status or something =p. If not, seriously, get out now and find yourself another career and another job. You'll thank yourself in 10 years when you suddenly have a lot of things and a lot more free time than your friends who went down the path of medicine..

f**k

 

[BigRedBeta]

"gathering funds for something I would enjoy"

As in what exactly? Because you might be surprised about how you can combine medicine with a lot of different things.

Let's face it, the first two years of medical school suck...HARD. It would be very difficult to come up with enough money to make me relive those two years again. And while I loved 3rd year, it was pretty easy to be jealous of my friends who just went off and got a job after graduation.

But the fact of the matter is, unless you're one of those people who worked in healthcare for years before moving towards med school, it's pretty damn tough to really know what part of medicine you'll actually like.

Most pre-clinical students have such a limited base of experience in all the different ways you can "be" a physician - in particular hospital medicine (since everyone has seen what outpatient clinics look like). I entered third year thinking that clinic-based practice was just a fact of life and where my training was going to take me, in part because I had no idea what doing inpatient medicine was really like. Intellectually I knew what "rounds" were, but I had no idea about what it actually entailed. I thought I would hate managing complex patients - having to keep track of all their different issues. And while I was pretty sure I knew I wanted to do pediatrics, I was worried that I would never find anything that really interested me and I'd be stuck being a general pediatrician taking care of ear aches all day.

So what happened? I got to third year, found out that I loved being in the hospital, that managing complex patients on a day to day basis was very satisfying for me, and that I hated clinic. As a fourth year, I found out how amazing the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit is, and now as a 2nd year resident, I'm headed towards a Peds Critical Care fellowship, where there's never any clinic, the patients are sicker than snot with multiple problems, I get plenty of procedures but don't have to go to the OR, and I get the satisfaction of getting them better but only to a point thus allowing me to avoid all the headaches that come from discharging the social nightmares back home (home health companies, follow up appointments, accommodations for work and school, etc). The point is, until you've actually gotten some sort of exposure, you're unlikely to really know what you do or don't like. And when it really does come down to choosing a specialty start with broad categories - kids or adults or both, lots of procedures or not so much, answering the question (diagnosing) or solving the problem (curing it). Those are questions you actually may be able to answer now if you're really self-aware of your likes and dislikes and they don't require you to only think about each specialty and say "would I like to be a ___________?".

 

[docelh]

My brother's friend quit when he was a resident in Ortho. If you're gonna leave, better to do it sooner. But RedBeta makes some valid points.

Any career pursued solely for the fringe benefits is bound to disappoint, including medicine. Consider:

- You give up your 20s to be a geek. That's prime life that ain't coming back.
- The financial side of it is terrible and uncertain in light of unsustainable health care costs.
- The stress of some specialties make it impossible to develop outside interests or maintain a family life.

 

[putyou2sleep]

I almost dropped out of medical school twice, to the serious nature of having filled out applications for pharmacy school and PhD training. I was heading down those lines for much the reasons you are; I didn't think I "wanted to be a doctor."

Third year does open things up, because you start to realize all of the options that are available. While the majority of physicians work way too many hours, you don't have to.

The options that nobody will ever tell you about (even half way through fourth year) are small community-based hospital jobs, in many specialties. Surgeons for example, work a TON at the hospital our school is based out of...but we get the cases from surrounding hospitals because they don't work after 5pm or on weekends.

As much as I found out first year that I had no previous idea of how much you had to learn to be a physician, I found out last year that there is zero heterogeneity in the field, and you make it what you want in the end.

 

[SFO-IST]

another question is whether you're picturing the grass being greener on the other side so to speak. What is this "other job/career" you are thinking about? It may not exist. you may also be projecting some other stress in your life onto medicine as a whole. for example, you may not like a professor, and thus not want to study. you may not like a student you have to see all the time and project that onto medical school as a whole. you may not like the debt and you project that onto the career as a whole.

I'm not saying that you are doing these, but these are questions that, if you answer honestly for yourself, you may arrive at greater understanding of where you are right now and where you want to be in the coming years.