How many are 100% committed?

[Newmanium]

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How many of you non-trads were 100% committed to becoming a doctor through all the pre-med stuff? It seems like everybody here is pretty gung ho, just curious how many continued to have doubts throughout? Was there one "point" that solidified your decision? It seems hard to imagine pursuing something like this *without* having some trepidation, even with all the passion in the world, it's still a huge sacrifice/commitment.


As I go through the pre-med motions, I'm not fully decided. I find medicine appealing, but haven't quite decided if the sacrifice is worthwhile - it's tough to make decisions based on a payoff in 10+ years (I realize you can enjoy the journey, but making it to an attending is what we're all shooting for).

Part of this is that I've done my research - and all my idealized preconceptions that were fabulously motivating, are now gone (thanks PandaBear!! 😛). I know about the loans, about the ungrateful patients, the daily grind that eventually becomes just a job, the stress, the exhaustion, the inefficient systems and bureacracys.

So part of me wonders, "Why in the world does *anybody* go into this field!?!?" Let alone thousands upon thousands of smart students who actually compete, hand over foot, to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to do this!! It's quite remarkable when you think about it.


However, even with all these doubts - I recently started to volunteer in the ER, and man, it really is amazing. I try to tell myself that it's all not worth it, to think about the sacrifice and everything else... but I can't talk myself out of it. I love this whole medicine thing, being around sickness - the sense that you're close to something that matters. We'll see, it sounds like that feeling eventually fades. I get the impression that medicine is a bit like marriage - at first you're in love, you make all these vows to each other, and then you start to get sick of each other, things get in a rut, you have periods of rejuvination, and so forth.

So anybody else go through this process while still trying to make up their mind? What clinched the decision, and has anybody actually decided against medicine? For me, the volunteering is what keeps me on track - helps me power through the annoying prereqs.

 

[NTF]

I think doubts are healthy and normal. But I also think the average non-trad spends and has spent a great deal of time educating themselves about what being a doctor really entails on a daily basis. At least for me, I don't feel like I have a lot of delusions left about the medical field. But so far it continues to be something that I see being engaging and meaningful until I reach my seventies (god willing).

But my attitude is to always prepare for the future with the best knowledge I have now, but to remain open, flexible and adaptable; and to always have the humility to be taught something new and be receptive to possibility that my preconceptions are misguided.

So 100%? Never. I don't deal in certainties. But feeling good and excited about it? Hell yeah.

 

[Skialta]

I am a non-trad who is now a PGY2 surgery resident. I was in the medical field before going to med school and had a pretty good grasp on what it was going to entail, but it is difficult to know exactly what to expect until you are living it.

I will not lie, it is demanding and there are many times where my life truly is just the hospital and going home to sleep or going home to be awoken all night long on home call. There are periods, sometimes up to three or four days at a time where I do not see my son, and that does suck. When I look back at my old life I had it pretty good, better than I realized, I just didn't know it.

Residency is tough, and it is supposed to be. My knowledge base and surgical skills have improved exponentially in just the last 15 months it is hard to believable when I think about it. I can take care of most of the sickest ICU patients and keep them alive, put in central lines when others have difficulty, place chest tubes etc, and when I stop to think about it, it is pretty damn cool what you can do. My co-residents are great and if it wasn't for them life would be pretty sh*ty. Overall I am pleased with my residency, and enjoy what I am doing.

But, I will say despite all those cool aspects there are things that aren't so cool... complications, the Sh*ty things and diseases that people get that you don't have any control over, kids with cancer etc. I find that you do kind of become numb to all the badness that surrounds you, if you don't I think you would be perpetually depressed. Everyone has demands on you and want some of your time. I can't read two pages of a text without falling asleep no matter what time of day it is. I could be diagnosed with narcolepsy. Don't underestimate the fatigue factor, medical school was a walk in the park compared to residency. The further I go the more I realize that being an attending is no bed or roses either. When one of my attendings is up with me operating all night I go home post call the next day while the attending is in clinic or is operating on their normal schedule. Now I realize that yes I am in surgery and should expect this, but I think most specialties are like this to fair extent, probably more than we realize.

I am not trying to persuade anyone from following their dream as it was my dream as well, but realize your perception is likely far from the reality of what it is like to do this on a daily basis. Good luck

Skialta

 

[sylvanthus]

I have been having some doubts creep up lately. After taking a look at the massive amount of debt and length of time it takes to be a doc, I am wondering if it would be wiser to become a physician assistant instead and start making money right away and still have a challenging career.

I think most pre-meds don't even bother to think about loans, lack of quality time with patients, lack of free-time, etc etc. All they see is that they will be a doc and want the prestige that comes along with it.

I am not sure what to do as my heart is pretty much set on family practice and family med docs seems to do relatively poorly in regards to compensation and the ability to payback student loans in a timely manner. Ahh well, I will keep on pluggin' away and see what happens.

 

[DrMidlife]

IMHO if you're doubting this goal, try really hard to find another goal.

I haven't once wanted out. I had a lot of fear about not getting in, but I haven't felt any hesitation about this pursuit, whatsoever. At the start I expected I'd find out, halfway through, about some job that I'd really, really want, say rolling out EMR in a Paul Farmer joint in Lesotho, or somesuch. I expected that I'd keep the 4.0 I had in computer science through my premed prereqs (um, no). I remember hoping I wouldn't chicken out.

I got some advice early on, "if there's anything else you're willing to do, other than medicine, do the other thing" and I took it very seriously. I looked at doing public health, bioinformatics, teaching, lots of truly rewarding careers that just don't resonate like medicine. I didn't just shadow, I freaking interrogated the docs I followed around. I heard a million stories about divorce, and child support, and burnout, and financial disaster, and how payment structures and liability absolutely suck the soul out of you. My housemate is an MD/PhD surgeon, with no debt, and she hates an awful lot of things she has to do in order to get to operate and work with patients. But really, I know from overhead, I was a middle-management suckup for 15 years. I need more than overhead to scare me away. I'm definitely not doing it for money; I had money. Any prestige whoredom died when I went DO.

These days I'm mostly focused on setting myself up to succeed in years 1 & 2, which scare me silly. I think of getting through those years like getting through labor and delivery. Lots of anticipation and excitement to get there, and then major huge debilitating out-of-control suckage, and then finally in 3rd year I get to do a wee bit of work and maybe get started.

100% committed is an understatement - I'm obsessed.

Best of luck to you.

 

[rafflecopter]

That's a good question. For me, when I decided to become a doctor, it was the first career choice I had made that stuck to me like super glue.
I first explored a TON of career choices. My undergrad major switched from computer science to psychology to law to business to teaching to screenwriting, but ultimately settled on film production as a major.

After I got out of school, I had the nagging feeling like I was doing the wrong kind of work. I wasn't fulfilled. I wanted to help people. I came to the idea of doctor but like the above poster I heard the quote "If you can be happy in a career other than a doctor, do that." Well, I considered all those: teacher, relief worker, nonprofit employee, therapist, social workers, army. The thing I kept coming back to was doctor. When I started researching it I liked it more. It suddenly clicked on like a lightbulb. This was what I had to do. This is what I was meant to do.

I have an overwhelming amount of difficulties to overcome before I can apply to medical school but I don't doubt my commitment or my choice one bit.

 

[CuyahogaMD2B]

My mom who is single, worked so hard for me to just get through high school. There was no way that I was going to let her and my aunt down in terms of not keeping my grades up. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer during my sophomore year, I dropped out of college to help her get back on her feet and just live. She was so sick from the chemo. When she finished her last round of chemo, she made me promise to enroll back in college (I did) and now, she is cancer-free (four years so far), healthy and I am so proud of her. This is her dream as much as mine.

 

[MSmentor018]

I waited 13 yrs for my admittance letter. this was a 3rd career change, with multiple trips back to college. I know at times when you think about the big picture of getting there is vry demoralizing. make short and long term goals, like just passing a test to planning for the mcat. need a pick me up, read something you like about medicine. it's a long, long road...and that distance diminishes some people. and that's ok. but if the end result being a physician is what you want then hang in there, don't give up! 👍

 

[Law2Doc]

IMHO if you're doubting this goal, try really hard to find another goal.
...

I got some advice early on, "if there's anything else you're willing to do, other than medicine, do the other thing" and I took it very seriously.

Strongly agree with these sentences. This is not a field where you can dabble. If you aren't sure you want to practice medicine, don't plod on blindly -- do what you need to to get more sure. You do not want to get mid-way through the first year of med school only to realize this isn't for you. The level of commitment required to get through med school is generally underestimated by premeds. You will be devoting a substantial chunk of your life to this endeavor. It isn't like college where you have a ton of free time, and it isn't like those jobs where you can muddle through the week working for the weekend. In the clinical years and residency, you may not even have off on a lot of weekends. So do whatever shadowing you can find, and talk to a ton of doctors, especially folks right out of residency (things have changed so much in the field that folks of an older generation won't have the same experience). Once you know all the warts, you have to still want it, and feel that the good outweighs the bad. So, while you are allowed to have some doubts, you can't still be asking yourself "is this worth it" even before you start. Because in such case for you it might not be. This is a great field for some people and an awful career choice for others. Figure out which one you are before you go $200k into debt and onto a 10 year path with no realistic professional offramps.