Failure and misery

[neusu]

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I have been following these boards for the better half of the last ten years, and perhaps it is a simple case of misery loves company, but it appears to me there has been an increasing trend of threads regarding being miserable in medicine, struggling to make the grade, or general unhappiness.

While I don't intend to start a thread full of sunshine and rainbows, I was curious if anyone else had noticed a similar trend. Are we less prepared to start medical school and medicine as a career? With the required volunteering and shadowing, new medical students and MDs should have a better idea of what they're getting themselves in to than in the past. Are we selecting the wrong students? Clearly, pursuing medicine requires ambition and some level of fortitude and intelligence, but that only is part of the story required to be a physician. How much preparation for the stress and sacrifice are we asking of our applicants. Has medicine changed? With all of the shift work, documentation, and work-hours restrictions are we playing the same role in peoples' lives as healers that we want.

 

[Omppu27]

Well the site has grown in the past ten years so maybe the % hasn't changed much but there are just more people??

 

[Wordead]

I have been following these boards for the better half of the last ten years, and perhaps it is a simple case of misery loves company, but it appears to me there has been an increasing trend of threads regarding being miserable in medicine, struggling to make the grade, or general unhappiness.

While I don't intend to start a thread full of sunshine and rainbows, I was curious if anyone else had noticed a similar trend. Are we less prepared to start medical school and medicine as a career? With the required volunteering and shadowing, new medical students and MDs should have a better idea of what they're getting themselves in to than in the past. Are we selecting the wrong students? Clearly, pursuing medicine requires ambition and some level of fortitude and intelligence, but that only is part of the story required to be a physician. How much preparation for the stress and sacrifice are we asking of our applicants. Has medicine changed? With all of the shift work, documentation, and work-hours restrictions are we playing the same role in peoples' lives as healers that we want.

My guess is that it's a combination of poor selection criteria for admitting students, changing medicine, a ton of doom and gloom talk rubbing off from attendings, and a generation of giant wusses.

That last one probably plays the biggest part. I'm fairly sure that 99% of problems seen on SDN can be solved by "stop being a damn baby and just do it".

 

[Arkangeloid]

Dude it's the fourth week of medical school. For us new guys, our old life was a little bit of studying sandwiched between a lot of binge drinking. Our new life is a little bit of binge drinking sandwiched between a lot of studying.

Making the switch takes time.

 

[PrideNeverDie]

people are expecting the golden age of medicine status our fathers enjoyed, but realizing they will be practicing in the obamacare midlevel age of medicine instead

we just need to readjust our expectations of our profession

 

[Siverhideo1985]

Complaining can be a stress reliever and this forum provides an anonymous way to do so. You don't have to come to SDN to share your stories of success or happiness in medicine. I'd be surprised if you found a statistical difference between now and 10 years ago when looking at the percentage of total threads/posts that are related to complaints/problems...afterall, the very impulse to come to SDN for advice is that you have some sort of issue you need help with...

 

[Doctor Strange]

People my age just like to b*tch about things all the time.

 

[evilbooyaa]

It's early in M1 for most people. This is the time of first anatomy exams, and multiple threads about OMG I'm going to fail from multiple newly neurotic MS1s. It's a part of life.

As to the part about doom and gloom, miserable in medicine, etc. etc. (aka things not grade related), that is a real shift, because the regulation and pay are both worsening for doctors. Until it stabilizes and the unknown effects of obamacare become know, there will be doom/gloom/panic.

Also, the vocal minority doesn't make it the majority of med students. I haven't created a thread in months because I don't really have any important question/issue to discuss. So I respond to scared MS1s about how they're not going to fail out of medical school for PASSING their first anatomy exam.

Just wait till March - The overflow of posts about Step 1 (that should be in the step 1 subforum, but won't all be) will be insane.

 

[Shjanzey]

.

 

[Mr Avante]

I blame Grey's Anatomy

 

[tiedyeddog]

I blame the expectations of being babied by incoming students. Most of us had middle-class/upper class parents who treated us like we could do no wrong and that we deserve our spots. I think this has created a sense of entitlement, this idea that we are owed an education, not that we have to bust our asses for it. So many of our generation expect to just be handed an M.D. and be told we are awesome and so many of us aren't able to handle even minor criticism. I think this is a piss-poor mentality and all of the whining seen on here displays that mindset is prominent in today's medical student.

 

[tiedyeddog]

.

 

[happygilmore]

I have been following these boards for the better half of the last ten years, and perhaps it is a simple case of misery loves company, but it appears to me there has been an increasing trend of threads regarding being miserable in medicine, struggling to make the grade, or general unhappiness.

While I don't intend to start a thread full of sunshine and rainbows, I was curious if anyone else had noticed a similar trend. Are we less prepared to start medical school and medicine as a career? With the required volunteering and shadowing, new medical students and MDs should have a better idea of what they're getting themselves in to than in the past. Are we selecting the wrong students? Clearly, pursuing medicine requires ambition and some level of fortitude and intelligence, but that only is part of the story required to be a physician. How much preparation for the stress and sacrifice are we asking of our applicants. Has medicine changed? With all of the shift work, documentation, and work-hours restrictions are we playing the same role in peoples' lives as healers that we want.

What does volunteering and shadowing tell you about a career in medicine? Little

 

[KnuxNole]

Weren't med students and doctors doing the same thing 10-20 years ago? This shouldn't be anything new at all, it's just the internet is a bit more vocal.

 

[Kahreek]

I blame the expectations of being babied by incoming students. Most of us had middle-class/upper class parents who treated us like we could do no wrong and that we deserve our spots. I think this has created a sense of entitlement, this idea that we are owed an education, not that we have to bust our asses for it. So many of our generation expect to just be handed an M.D. and be told we are awesome and so many of us aren't able to handle even minor criticism. I think this is a piss-poor mentality and all of the whining seen on here displays that mindset is prominent in today's medical student.

showing up on time and being able to accept criticism are a prerequisite for med profession. And i mean PREREQUISITE.
But yes i think this forum needs more people creating threads about how awesome something in their life as been.
But in the end it is all about the jaded that come here to vent. I guess that is alright.
As a pre-med you have to be really motivated and self-driven to enter this field, but then part of the education includes disillusioning and i guess it is universal that all med students go through it, sometime during med school, I would be worried about someone who did not.

 

[Brigade4Radiant]

I have been following these boards for the better half of the last ten years, and perhaps it is a simple case of misery loves company, but it appears to me there has been an increasing trend of threads regarding being miserable in medicine, struggling to make the grade, or general unhappiness.

While I don't intend to start a thread full of sunshine and rainbows, I was curious if anyone else had noticed a similar trend. Are we less prepared to start medical school and medicine as a career? With the required volunteering and shadowing, new medical students and MDs should have a better idea of what they're getting themselves in to than in the past. Are we selecting the wrong students? Clearly, pursuing medicine requires ambition and some level of fortitude and intelligence, but that only is part of the story required to be a physician. How much preparation for the stress and sacrifice are we asking of our applicants. Has medicine changed? With all of the shift work, documentation, and work-hours restrictions are we playing the same role in peoples' lives as healers that we want.

SDN is just a nice place to vent and feel neurotic. The majority of posters come in and worry about getting into residency or medical school. We do it because we do it because we don't want to be known as the complainer or worrier in real life. There are a lot of happy people in residency and medical school. If you are satisfied you are less likely to go to a message board and tell everyone how great it is rather than if you had a bad day.

 

[operaman]

Can't remember who said it, but this is what pops into my head whenever I or someone I know complains:

"Complaining is simply bragging about how much you can take."

I think much of the med school/medicine ranting has roots in that idea.

Personally, I've loved med school so far. Loved first year, second was a little more of a slog but still fascinating, and third year has been a blast so far and I started with the 2 toughest rotations. It's all a matter of perspective and I believe perspective is contagious. Everyone on my rotations so far has been happy and excited about medicine and taking care of patients, but I think this sentiment is self-sustaining the same way whining can beget whining. When I'm having a rough day and bitching about something, I helps to have my buddy remind me of something great about what we're doing rather than attempt to one-up my poor attitude.

Hmmmm...Somewhere in all that rambling is a thought!

 

[Arkangeloid]

Well, now that I'm in Head and Neck, I can honestly say that I would rather have boozed and humped and slacked my way through undergrad rather than going ham on the MCAT and the books so I could get into a choice medical school. Let's hope this crap gets better. As it stands, I blame God for deciding to cram so many stupid nerves into one place.

 

[sobored]

Well, now that I'm in Head and Neck, I can honestly say that I would rather have boozed and humped and slacked my way through undergrad rather than going ham on the MCAT and the books so I could get into a choice medical school. Let's hope this crap gets better. As it stands, I blame God for deciding to cram so many stupid nerves into one place.

Just wait until you get to pelvis/perineum!

But to the OP:

-Mind-numbing increase in tuition/living expenses over the years --> an astounding amount of debt for current and future med students.
-Uncertainty about the ACA
-Declining reimbursements (before most of us get to have a taste of the "golden years" of reimbursement).
-The ridiculous amount of competition one faces in order to obtain a desired residency (if competitive).
-B*tching from older med students/residents/attendings about how bad things have become/are going to become.

I'm sure there are more. These are just some. Although things are just kind of sucky in general right now, I still feel fortunate about becoming a physician soon.

 

[zeppelinpage4]

Med students are stressed, and I know my classmates and I love to complain, but I have feeling if we were offered a chance to leave med school, no debt, no consequences, just leave, we would still choose to stay. Somwhere deep down we want to be here. 😛

I think med students for the most part are happy, they just also love to complain, which you need to be able to do sometimes, especially on an anonymous forum.

Just wait until you get to pelvis/perineum!

But to the OP:

-Mind-numbing increase in tuition/living expenses over the years --> an astounding amount of debt for current and future med students.
-Uncertainty about the ACA
-Declining reimbursements (before most of us get to have a taste of the "golden years" of reimbursement).
-The ridiculous amount of competition one faces in order to obtain a desired residency (if competitive).
-B*tching from older med students/residents/attendings about how bad things have become/are going to become.

I'm sure there are more. These are just some. Although things are just kind of sucky in general right now, I still feel fortunate about becoming a physician soon.

We just finished pelvis and perineum, they tried to teach us everything in a week....hence most people in my class don't know what's actually going on in that region. -_-

 

[yehhhboiii]

Med students are stressed, and I know my classmates and I love to complain, but I have feeling if we were offered a chance to leave med school, no debt, no consequences, just leave, we would still choose to stay. Somwhere deep down we want to be here. 😛

I think med students for the most part are happy, they just also love to complain, which you need to be able to do sometimes, especially on an anonymous forum.


We just finished pelvis and perineum, they tried to teach us everything in a week....hence most people in my class don't know what's actually going on in that region. -_-

that's why you need to come in with prior experience

 

[coffeesnob]

With the required volunteering and shadowing, new medical students and MDs should have a better idea of what they're getting themselves in to than in the past.

I definitely missed the memo on 3 tests a week, 8+ hours of studying daily, more studying on weekends, class rank, and the distribution of test scores with a ridiculously low standard deviation and the mean of 85%. The last point means I can study my butt off and get 90% on the exam, but still I will be in around 40-50th percentile; this has been the biggest shock to me. Prior to medical school, I was able to achieve a goal with dedication and hard-work. In medical school, those two things alone aren't cutting it.

I think my school did a good job selecting students. It's just that we are all going through an adjustment period. I complain everyday -- because I can.

I don't think anyone is FULLY ready for this type of academic rigor and pressure. But I bet most of us will make it just fine.

 

[Arkangeloid]

Just wait until you get to pelvis/perineum!

Eh, we had that exam, was pretty easy for whatever reason.

What bugs me is that it's so easy to get bogged down in the minutiae that you can lose track of big-picture stuff sometimes. For example, even though I did fine on Legs/Abdomen/Pelvis, I did not know that women urinated out their urethras (or even where it was) until a few days before the exam. I guess the professor assumed it was common knowledge.

 

[Textbookversion]

I definitely missed the memo on 3 tests a week, 8+ hours of studying daily, more studying on weekends, class rank, and the distribution of test scores with a ridiculously low standard deviation and the mean of 85%. The last point means I can study my butt off and get 90% on the exam, but still I will be in around 40-50th percentile; this has been the biggest shock to me. Prior to medical school, I was able to achieve a goal with dedication and hard-work. In medical school, those two things alone aren't cutting it.

I think my school did a good job selecting students. It's just that we are all going through an adjustment period. I complain everyday -- because I can.

I don't think anyone is FULLY ready for this type of academic rigor and pressure. But I bet most of us will make it just fine.

if it makes you feel better, second year is worse.

 

[zeppelinpage4]

that's why you need to come in with prior experience

Experience with the pelvis? Yeah, I never took anatomy. I'm working on getting more experience with the pelvis region though....just not from lab lol. 😛

 

[Akali]

I definitely missed the memo on 3 tests a week, 8+ hours of studying daily, more studying on weekends, class rank, and the distribution of test scores with a ridiculously low standard deviation and the mean of 85%. The last point means I can study my butt off and get 90% on the exam, but still I will be in around 40-50th percentile; this has been the biggest shock to me. Prior to medical school, I was able to achieve a goal with dedication and hard-work. In medical school, those two things alone aren't cutting it.

I think my school did a good job selecting students. It's just that we are all going through an adjustment period. I complain everyday -- because I can.

I don't think anyone is FULLY ready for this type of academic rigor and pressure. But I bet most of us will make it just fine.

How did you miss this memo during your research of and the process of applying to medical schools? Did you go through the entire process without asking a single person what the experience would be like? Because if you did, they would've told you that it is an insanely difficult experience like nothing you're used to.

 

[tiedyeddog]

Eh, we had that exam, was pretty easy for whatever reason.

What bugs me is that it's so easy to get bogged down in the minutiae that you can lose track of big-picture stuff sometimes. For example, even though I did fine on Legs/Abdomen/Pelvis, I did not know that women urinated out their urethras (or even where it was) until a few days before the exam. I guess the professor assumed it was common knowledge.

Wtf? What did you think women urinated out of? That IS common knowledge.

 

[Arkangeloid]

Wtf? What did you think women urinated out of? That IS common knowledge.

I thought they peed out their vajayjays...

 

[VisionaryTics]

I thought they peed out their vajayjays...

Okay, it's not your professor's job to sort that one out.

 

[mcloaf]

I definitely missed the memo on 3 tests a week, 8+ hours of studying daily, more studying on weekends, class rank, and the distribution of test scores with a ridiculously low standard deviation and the mean of 85%. The last point means I can study my butt off and get 90% on the exam, but still I will be in around 40-50th percentile; this has been the biggest shock to me. Prior to medical school, I was able to achieve a goal with dedication and hard-work. In medical school, those two things alone aren't cutting it.

I think my school did a good job selecting students. It's just that we are all going through an adjustment period. I complain everyday -- because I can.

I don't think anyone is FULLY ready for this type of academic rigor and pressure. But I bet most of us will make it just fine.

How did you miss this memo during your research of and the process of applying to medical schools? Did you go through the entire process without asking a single person what the experience would be like? Because if you did, they would've told you that it is an insanely difficult experience like nothing you're used to.

FWIW, my first year experience is nowhere near that intense or unpleasant. 1quiz/wk, 1exam/month, no ranks, I usually only study one day of the weekend if that, and I think I've only had one day so far where I've studied anywhere near 8 hours for a stretch yet (though I don't count passively streaming lectures as "studying"). Difficulty will rise as we advance, but it's been reasonable so far.

I don't think it's fair to assume somebody was totally clueless just because they may not have been completely prepared for the environment of their particular medical school. It sounds like you and I would have very different things to tell somebody who asked what to expect as an MS1.

 

[evilbooyaa]

Med students are stressed, and I know my classmates and I love to complain, but I have feeling if we were offered a chance to leave med school, no debt, no consequences, just leave, we would still choose to stay. Somwhere deep down we want to be here. 😛

I think med students for the most part are happy, they just also love to complain, which you need to be able to do sometimes, especially on an anonymous forum.


We just finished pelvis and perineum, they tried to teach us everything in a week....hence most people in my class don't know what's actually going on in that region. -_-

that's why you need to come in with prior experience

👍Well done.

 

[evilbooyaa]

Wtf? What did you think women urinated out of? That IS common knowledge.

I thought they peed out their vajayjays...

Yeah, that one fact absolutely should be considered common knowledge.

 

[Frazier]

Well, now that I'm in Head and Neck, I can honestly say that I would rather have boozed and humped and slacked my way through undergrad rather than going ham on the MCAT and the books so I could get into a choice medical school. Let's hope this crap gets better. As it stands, I blame God for deciding to cram so many stupid nerves into one place.

I didn't like anatomy much either... that is until I saw our biochem syllabus. 😀
The amount of material we need to absorb in a measly 16 days is daunting to say the least.

So it goes.

 

[yehhhboiii]

I didn't like anatomy much either... that is until I saw our biochem syllabus. 😀
The amount of material we need to absorb in a measly 16 days is daunting to say the least.

So it goes.

the volume only increases from there
the good thing is that you get better at handling it as you move on

 

[alpinism]

I definitely missed the memo on 3 tests a week, 8+ hours of studying daily, more studying on weekends, class rank, and the distribution of test scores with a ridiculously low standard deviation and the mean of 85%. The last point means I can study my butt off and get 90% on the exam, but still I will be in around 40-50th percentile; this has been the biggest shock to me. Prior to medical school, I was able to achieve a goal with dedication and hard-work. In medical school, those two things alone aren't cutting it.

I think my school did a good job selecting students. It's just that we are all going through an adjustment period. I complain everyday -- because I can.

I don't think anyone is FULLY ready for this type of academic rigor and pressure. But I bet most of us will make it just fine.

Unless you're trying to be in the top 10% of your class, figure out how to study more efficiently. With the exception of those on the 1.5 yr curriculum, during M1 you really shouldn't need to study more than 4-5hrs a day. If you study that way during M2 you'll be studying over 12hrs a day (no joke).

Eh, we had that exam, was pretty easy for whatever reason.

What bugs me is that it's so easy to get bogged down in the minutiae that you can lose track of big-picture stuff sometimes. For example, even though I did fine on Legs/Abdomen/Pelvis, I did not know that women urinated out their urethras (or even where it was) until a few days before the exam. I guess the professor assumed it was common knowledge.

Lol

 

[Arkangeloid]

I didn't like anatomy much either... that is until I saw our biochem syllabus. 😀
The amount of material we need to absorb in a measly 16 days is daunting to say the least.

So it goes.

At our school Biochemistry is a "vacation" compared to Anatomy.

 

[Frazier]

the volume only increases from there
the good thing is that you get better at handling it as you move on

That's good to hear.

 

[tiedyeddog]

the volume only increases from there
the good thing is that you get better at handling it as you move on

I think this is an absolute truth. You'll get better at deciding what is fluff and what absolutely should be memorized

 

[fatpigeon2010]

There may be more negative posting, but if anything its probably just due to there being a forum to complain, not that attitudes are that different. Are medical students in my generation often entitled and unable to accept criticism? Sure we are, but I doubt its that different than generations before us when they were in our stage. It's part of gaining experience in life and those of us that choose to live this way will be humbled time and time again throughout our training, I'm sure. Of course we will also be told by those before us that "people in my generation never acted this way, blah blah blah". We all like to think we are so different, when we really aren't, we're just at different stages in life. People are just people, and on average we have the same negative and positive attributes.

 

[yehhhboiii]

There may be more negative posting, but if anything its probably just due to there being a forum to complain, not that attitudes are that different. Are medical students in my generation often entitled and unable to accept criticism? Sure we are, but I doubt its that different than generations before us when they were in our stage. It's part of gaining experience in life and those of us that choose to live this way will be humbled time and time again throughout our training, I'm sure. Of course we will also be told by those before us that "people in my generation never acted this way, blah blah blah". We all like to think we are so different, when we really aren't, we're just at different stages in life. People are just people, and on average we have the same negative and positive attributes.

well there's the fact that we get to look forward to being paid less to do more with more people telling us what to do. for example, that shortsighted decision to limit work hours because being tired everyday from 16 hour days 5 days in a row without time to do laundry or eat a nice meal at home is really preferable to having real days off

 

[Perrotfish]

well there's the fact that we get to look forward to being paid less to do more with more people telling us what to do. for example, that shortsighted decision to limit work hours because being tired everyday from 16 hour days 5 days in a row without time to do laundry or eat a nice meal at home is really preferable to having real days off

The new 2012 work hour rules guarantees the exact same number of days off as the system it replaced (4 24 hour periods free from work in a 28 day period). It also has the same work hour limit. The only difference is that Interns can only work 16 hours in a row. That means most internship switched from a Q3 Call system with one day off a week to six 12.5 hour shifts with one day off a week, either system works out to exactly 75 scheduled hours in the hospital a week. Its the exact same amount of laundry time, the same number of nice meals at home, and the same number of days off.

 

[Planes2Doc]

The pre-med dog and pony show is only supposed to give you a slight taste of what physicians do on a day to day basis. How many pre-meds actually shadow a medical student?

With that said, if college students knew what medical school was really like, less people would be applying.

 

[StoicJosher]

I'm fairly sure that 99% of problems seen on SDN can be solved by "stop being a damn baby and just do it".

👍
I rarely post on SDN anymore mostly because of this.

 

[Kaustikos]

It's partly because no one understands outside of medicine
It's partly because doing this with classmates doesn't help and only stresses things out more
It's partly because of House/Greys/TV/Movies
It's partly because of naivety
100% because no one realizes we're masochists and that's why we subjected ourselves to this process.

 

[imperturbable]

It's partly because no one understands outside of medicine
It's partly because doing this with classmates doesn't help and only stresses things out more
It's partly because of House/Greys/TV/Movies
It's partly because of naivety
100% because no one realizes we're masochists and that's why we subjected ourselves to this process.

My life is so hard. I have to study every day, mom!

 

[fyfanatic]

I have been following these boards for the better half of the last ten years, and perhaps it is a simple case of misery loves company, but it appears to me there has been an increasing trend of threads regarding being miserable in medicine, struggling to make the grade, or general unhappiness.

While I don't intend to start a thread full of sunshine and rainbows, I was curious if anyone else had noticed a similar trend. Are we less prepared to start medical school and medicine as a career? With the required volunteering and shadowing, new medical students and MDs should have a better idea of what they're getting themselves in to than in the past. Are we selecting the wrong students? Clearly, pursuing medicine requires ambition and some level of fortitude and intelligence, but that only is part of the story required to be a physician. How much preparation for the stress and sacrifice are we asking of our applicants. Has medicine changed? With all of the shift work, documentation, and work-hours restrictions are we playing the same role in peoples' lives as healers that we want.

After doing 1 year in medicine as a prelim, I have gained a lot more understanding of why doctors, especially residents, seem to be miserable and unhappy.

I think as a med student, you have this ideal in your head that medicine is about helping people and applying the knowledge you gained in school to real life patient care.
And then as you start internship, you get a sense that helping people is only maybe 40% of your work day. The rest of your time is spent doing paperwork to accommodate all the admissions and discharges, and coordinating all the tests and consults that your patients need.
I'm not sure how it was in the past, but it seems like there is almost an obsession in the hospital administration to fill up the beds with patients and then getting them out as soon as possible so that they can fill up the beds again. During rounds, I found that a lot of the time the emphasis was not on teaching but rather discussing what needs to be done to get each patient discharged in a timely manner.

The other thing is that people expect you as the doctor to respond to everyone's demands as soon as possible, whether it's the nurse paging you, a patient who is upset about something, the case manager who is wondering where the discharge summary is, the social worker, your senior resident who wants to find out if the 20 things you were supposed to get done already got done, and so on. God forbid if you have a sick patient that you're assessing and you don't respond to a nurse's page within 2 minutes, you will be paged incessantly until you respond (you will learn to despise the sound of a pager).

Lastly, in this age of defensive medicine, there is not as much thought put into diagnosing and treating a patient as perhaps there was in the past. You rely less on physical exam skills and history taking and more on ordering a CT or MRI to make a diagnosis, or just following whatever the consultant says to do which is usually order this or that. And all the fine arts of taking an H&P that you learned as a med student, you just don't have time to do that with every patient because you are too busy doing paperwork and getting stuff done as I mentioned above.

So I think that it's not so much the hours that make people miserable but all the BS that you have to put up with...but other than that, medicine is still better and more meaningful than a lot of other jobs out there =)