Have your reasons for pursuing medicine changed?

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HybridEarth

HybridEarth

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Hi guys,

Just thought this would be an interesting topic to hear about. For all med students / interns / residents / fellows / faculty and attendings, how has your desire to have a career in medicine changed (if at all) since back when you wrote your personal statement for med school? E.g., I'm just curious to hear about how your perspectives changed as you gained more and more exposure to your calling. Did you find new things motivating you that you didn't previously consider? What were you most surprised about once you actually began your training?
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My perspective on medicine was destroyed and rebuilt after living in DR and spearheaded an otitis media campaign. A lot of maturation also came quite last minute from opportunistic networking with wonderful physicians who all happened to be incredible mentors and advocates. The more physicians and medical students I spoke to, the more I was able to update my lingo/understanding, ditch vague premed ideals and dive into the reality of medical education. I felt the knowledge gap become more and more narrow and eventually eliminated all doubt that im applying to med school because this entire journey had brought out the best in me and pushed my boundaries in humility, emotion control and responsibility.
 
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Not really, but I came to consider becoming a doctor relatively recently.
I had been around medicine my entire life and my wife's family has always had doctors in it. So perhaps that exposure helped me figure out why before I ever really started.
For the most part everything I've learned and seen has reinforced my desire to become a doc.
There are times though I just look in the mirror and say "what the hell have I gotten myself into" and "why am I going to med school in my late 30s"
 
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It's always been about 4 things: chicks, money, power, chicks


But really, when I was 4 it was because I thought it was cool that bones could grow back together. When I was a teen, it was because I thought they made a lot of money (lol). Now, it's because I really enjoy meeting people, and that I have one life and I want to spend it doing something greatly rewarding and meaningful.

EDIT: well apparently this is a thread for med students and beyond, not pre-meds. But my answer still stands
 
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Honestly, more than anything now, I'm looking for a stable career and salary so my significant other and I can live a comfortable life. The romantic notions of medicine were abandoned very quickly for me. Don't get me wrong, I love medicine, the science, and working with patients, but if there's anything that med school has taught me, it's that there are more important things in your life, and, at the end of the day, this is just a job.
 
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When I first started medical school I loved the idea of being a hospitalist (IMED in an inpatient setting)

Now a 3rd year, after finishing my IMED rotation and starting a surgery rotation I could never see myself being a hospitalist. It is very mentally exhausting, even from my perspective as a medical student. Don't get me wrong, I still love taking care of people, just in a different way. I like doing surgeries/complex procedures to help patients instead of monitoring their chronic conditions or titrating their meds day to day. When something is wrong with a patient I want to take action surgically, not sit around wondering of it is related to their HTN/COPD/Diabetes/Fibromyalgia/Chronic Pain Syndrome/Book of Prescription Medications.

But hey, it takes a special person to be a hospitalist. I am just not that special person ;). I prefer healing with steel.

BIG ADVICE: You really won't know what you want to do until you start your clinical rotations.
 
OK.
OnePunchBiopsy said:
When I first started medical school I loved the idea of being a hospitalist (IMED in an inpatient setting)

Now a 3rd year, after finishing my IMED rotation and starting a surgery rotation I could never see myself being a hospitalist. It is very mentally exhausting, even from my perspective as a medical student. Don't get me wrong, I still love taking care of people, just in a different way. I like doing surgeries/complex procedures to help patients instead of monitoring their chronic conditions or titrating their meds day to day. When something is wrong with a patient I want to take action surgically, not sit around wondering of it is related to their HTN/COPD/Diabetes/Fibromyalgia/Chronic Pain Syndrome/Book of Prescription Medications.

But hey, it takes a special person to be a hospitalist. I am just not that special person ;). I prefer healing with steel.

BIG ADVICE: You really won't know what you want to do until you start your clinical rotations.
Click to expand...
 
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I want money and job security. No other profession will give me that other than software.
 
Although not suffient, "I love helping people" is a legitimate and important part of it. I hope you like people and want to help them if you want to be a physician.
 
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Bermie said:
Although not suffient, "I love helping people" is a legitimate and important part of it. I hope you like people and want to help them if you want to be a physician.
Click to expand...

Yea, I think there are a lot of appealing aspects in medicine. Its a career that would be rewarding and fulfilling. Helping others greatly daily, job security, job outlook, financial security, challenging, combines hardcore sciences, seeing effects (positive effects hopefully) of your critical thinking and decisions quite frequently compared to other careers.... medicine has ALL of these aspects. Another good portion of your job as a physician (In most specialties) is building a rapport and just talking to people. Of course many jobs have this aspect but not in the same capacity. There are probably few people who gun for medicine for JUST ONE aspect. I think most people go into medicine for several or perhaps all of these aspects. Whats more, I think it would be a bad decision to pick a career based on just ONE aspect of it. There are so many appealing aspects about medicine.

Surgeons take it a step further by adding physical skill and dexterity into the equation. And for anyone involved heavily in sports/playing instruments/etc that would be icing on the cake.
 
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The gravity of what it means to help people medically was not entirely clear to me until I was doing it. Sure, you're doing a service to humanity and whatnot, but helping someone to live when their injury wants them to die is pretty impactful. As a critical care physician your choice of acute intervention has truly immediate ramifications, which is why I gravitated to it. That can be incredibly gratifying.

It can also be incredibly burdensome. I'm lucky enough to be an attending at one of the greatest hospitals in the world, and I am constantly wracked with doubt that I'm doing the wrong thing for my patients. That's perversely a good thing, as it keeps me on my game, but it bleeds into every other phase of my life as well when I'm on service. I thought it would get easier as I got further away from fellowship, but if anything it gets harder because you're less and less adapted to being constantly "on".

But oh boy is it meaningful. Even when people die, sometimes especially when people die, the privilege of bearing witness as a physician to the humanity and the grief and the love, which few ever get to do, is a deep, personal experience. I could be stressed out managing a hedge fund, but I'd never have that window into the human experience.

Funny thing is, I'm actually mostly a scientist. I spend more than 80% of my time in the lab, trying to rid the world of vascular disease. I never expected to be an NIH-funded scientist with a lab and really cold freezers and post-docs and techs and everything. That didn't show up in my personal statement. My job as a physician, with all of its meaning and stress and gravitas, supports my career as a scientist, both financially because I can pay for some of my time, and motivationally, because it reminds me of why I do what I do. So my motivations for being a physician definitely evolved over time, as will yours, and many of you will be shocked at where you turn up. I was "supposed" to be a surgical oncologist from my early personal statements.
 
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typhoonegator said:
The gravity of what it means to help people medically was not entirely clear to me until I was doing it. Sure, you're doing a service to humanity and whatnot, but helping someone to live when their injury wants them to die is pretty impactful. As a critical care physician your choice of acute intervention has truly immediate ramifications, which is why I gravitated to it. That can be incredibly gratifying.

It can also be incredibly burdensome. I'm lucky enough to be an attending at one of the greatest hospitals in the world, and I am constantly wracked with doubt that I'm doing the wrong thing for my patients. That's perversely a good thing, as it keeps me on my game, but it bleeds into every other phase of my life as well when I'm on service. I thought it would get easier as I got further away from fellowship, but if anything it gets harder because you're less and less adapted to being constantly "on".

But oh boy is it meaningful. Even when people die, sometimes especially when people die, the privilege of bearing witness as a physician to the humanity and the grief and the love, which few ever get to do, is a deep, personal experience. I could be stressed out managing a hedge fund, but I'd never have that window into the human experience.

Funny thing is, I'm actually mostly a scientist. I spend more than 80% of my time in the lab, trying to rid the world of vascular disease. I never expected to be an NIH-funded scientist with a lab and really cold freezers and post-docs and techs and everything. That didn't show up in my personal statement. My job as a physician, with all of its meaning and stress and gravitas, supports my career as a scientist, both financially because I can pay for some of my time, and motivationally, because it reminds me of why I do what I do. So my motivations for being a physician definitely evolved over time, as will yours, and many of you will be shocked at where you turn up. I was "supposed" to be a surgical oncologist from my early personal statements.
Click to expand...

Amazing read. Thank you.
 
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I used to be in it for the women, but after some wonderful and eye opening experiences in undergrad I'm now in it for the men.
 
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I wanted to work with my hands and fix things. *shrug* It was this or being a mechanic and I'd rather fix diseases than cars.
 
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