amysdad said:
Just looking over my application for intern/residency. What a bottom feeder. My grades suck, I just passed my USMLE and COMLEX by the skin of my teeth. I am not a member of any club, never published, no fellowship AND..I failed anatomy and went to the 5 year track.
Im a nontraditional student at 35 I was a paramedic/nurse/firefighter in my previous life. Am I going to go back to putting out fires for a living with 200K debt?
amysdad
Welcome to my world...sort of. I never failed anything, got respectable but not stupendous scores on Step 1 and 2, but somehow found myself in the bottom ten percent of my class. I was a totally undistinguished medical student and it is only through force of character, an interesting resume, and a little luck that I have gotten a few early interviews for this year's match and hope to get more.
After failing to match, I scrambled into a Primary Care program at a very prestigious program.
This shows you two things. First, anybody can match into some program unless you beat a handicapped, gay, african-American, HIV positive, lesbian to death with a baby seal which you then ate deep-fried while smoking an unfiltered cigarette after which you used a Koran for a napkin. And then they would have to catch you on tape to absolutely prevent you from matching.
Second, Some Primary Care program will take you as many Primary Care programs have to reach deep into the barrel if they want to fill including reaching way, way, down for FMGs from the third world. (Although to be fair many FMGs are excellent physicians and are fighting what some would call an unfair bias against them.)
So buck up. You will match.
Also, even though I am trying to switch specialties, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with my current specialty. You can make a good but not extravagant living at it, certainly more than you will make at almost any other real job.
Investment banking blah blah marketing blah blah law law blah. Sure, some in these fields make "six figures" but this is uncommon. Every physician in any specialty starts at "six figures" so you might as well stick it out if for no other reason than you will eventually do all right.
Not to mention the intangibles of medicine, those special times in intern year when you rise above the incredible volume of paperwork and actually treat a patient and make a difference in their health. These moments are, I assure you, few and far between (at least so far at my program).
But if you really don't want to match into the specialties in which you have a decent chance (FP, Internal Medcine, Psychiatry, pediatrics) then maybe you should go back to a career you enjoy. Money is important, of course, but working at a job you hate is probably worse than paying back a 200K debt.
Believe me, I have a previous profession which at the high end makes about what the low-end Primary Care physician makes so I thought long and hard about going back to it after I failed to match into the specialty I wanted. The only things that stopped me were first that I like medicine and second that it is pretty hard to make the "high end salary" especially after a four year hiatus during which time I lost all of my contacts and fell out of the network.
If it were as easy as going back and making the "high end" I probably would have, with regrets, cut my losses and switched back. Realistically I probably could have gone back but probably started at a salary only slightly better than I now make as a resident with a "cap" considerably less than I will make in three years if I stick it out.
I am venting a little here. And I hate to sound crass. But that's the way it is. PM me if you want some more bad advice.
