If doctors are so miserable & burnt out, why do so many of their kids still want to go to medical school?

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Well...if it's planned far enough in advance and you use your approved paid time off you might be able to...(only half kidding I've heard plenty of interns getting their vacation schedule approved).

But do you think working 40 hrs/week prepared you for working 80 hrs/week? I'm doing about 20 hrs/week rn ( I'm basically stuck working part-time because the surgeon I work for only needs a part-time scribe and no other surgeons need scribes rn) and I don't even think it can be compared to 40 hrs/week ( it feels super chill which is what I want before grinding at least 60 hrs/week for med school). I think even normal full time jobs can't prepare you for residency.
My colleagues and I firmly believe that an employment history can better prepare one for both med school and beyond.

My point seems to be getting lost. This isn't about the 80 hours and thier toll on you. It's more about that people who have been professional students are unprepared for the workplace (residency is their first actual job) and thus, have poor employment attitudes. In essence, they treat M3/4 and residency like school, not work.

And some of you who are hard workers but are getting triggered by these observations, stop projecting.
 
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lol? I've worked a'plenty. What's bad about that look?
Maybe its just the way I was raised I suppose? I've always been told and trained that on time is 5-10 minutes early. This is so you're ready to actually start on time and not a few minutes late after once you get yourself together. I've also heard from many residents/attendings I've worked with that its a quality they look at, I may have generalized. Very well could be doc and/or area dependent I guess if it hasn't caused you problems.
 
Word from our preceptors and residents here on SDN.

Yes, there are more non-trads, but they're still the minority of med students.
Right, but your point was the “current crop” couldn’t hang because we’ve never worked. When, in reality, we’ve worked more than previous generations. Maybe that’s why there’s more unrest among students and residents now, because we realize how much easier everyone else has it?
 
Right, but your point was the “current crop” couldn’t hang because we’ve never worked. When, in reality, we’ve worked more than previous generations. Maybe that’s why there’s more unrest among students and residents now, because we realize how much easier everyone else has it?
See my last post.
 
Any other races that are present in much smaller percentages in the general pop but much more represented in medicine? Think hard!
 
How much do dermatologists make? 400-500k for a 40 hr week?
 
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I worked 60 hour work weeks for a few years before med school. Working helped me see how idiotic this system could be. I got lectured from an attending for asking if all of us students should stick around when there was only 1 patient left on the schedule for an appointment 3 hours later who was going to be seen by the resident and the student with the resident. He lectured me on how this is a job and in the real world you can't just leave early. At my job, I came in to work for free on weekends when there was work to be done and I would go home early on weekdays when there was nothing left to be done. We are paying to be on rotations. If there is work or learning to do, I will do it. I'm not paying to sit and stare a wall with nothing to do until 5pm just for the sake of being there. If you want me to act like an hourly paid worker- pay me to sit for hours with nothing to do!

The attendings who complain are the same ones who have you come in to watch them interview patients for hours without making it a worthwhile learning experience. Many older people like to complain about the younger generation, and they will find reasons to complain whether or not they are in the right.

MS3/4 is a learning experience and students are infantilized. Students are told they are the bottom of the totem pole, not helpful, and that they can't do anything. You can't turn around and fault students for not having autonomy when the program is structured that way. Same with residency. Residents are being given less autonomy, when trainees should be empowered to take ownership over their work by being given more responsibility.
The infantilization has been the hardest part as someone who also had real jobs and an adult life before school. Medicine is filled with highly trained people and even the interns and residents have knowledge/thinking exponentially higher than the med students. It's the process at work.

That said, I've never been around another group of people that think because you don't know how to put an order for something uncommon in that it means you don't know how to do xyz basic generalized work or adult life thing. It hasn't been common but you'll get interns referring to their older med students as "the babies" or whatever. The worst part is that this type of behavior occurs right after the resident/attending is telling their coworker that they don't know how to do something at their house, make good car decisions, or how to use a computer.

It didn't happen often but when it did it was so weird. Maybe it's because those people were clueless at the student stage about literally everything so they just assume everyone is? Who knows. I don't plan to continue that trend of treating adults like *****s.
 
I worked 60 hour work weeks for a few years before med school. Working helped me see how idiotic this system could be. I got lectured from an attending for asking if all of us students should stick around when there was only 1 patient left on the schedule for an appointment 3 hours later who was going to be seen by the resident and the student with the resident. He lectured me on how this is a job and in the real world you can't just leave early. At my job, I came in to work for free on weekends when there was work to be done and I would go home early on weekdays when there was nothing left to be done. We are paying to be on rotations. If there is work or learning to do, I will do it. I'm not paying to sit and stare a wall with nothing to do until 5pm just for the sake of being there. If you want me to act like an hourly paid worker- pay me to sit for hours with nothing to do!

The attendings who complain are the same ones who have you come in to watch them interview patients for hours without making it a worthwhile learning experience. Many older people like to complain about the younger generation, and they will find reasons to complain whether or not they are in the right.

MS3/4 is a learning experience and students are infantilized. Students are told they are the bottom of the totem pole, not helpful, and that they can't do anything. You can't turn around and fault students for not having autonomy when the program is structured that way. Same with residency. Residents are being given less autonomy, when trainees should be empowered to take ownership over their work by being given more responsibility.
Im not sure what sort of work you did before medical school.
I had the opposite experience. I worked a white collar job prior to medical school and rotations have been fairly easy.
Medical school and Medicine seems to be similarly structured.
Here are some of the untaught things on the curriculum at white collar jobs and medicine that i picked up and have served me well.

Show up early.
Leave after your boss.
Act interested.
Dont complain.
Even if your work is meaningless act like it is important and carry it out with seriousness.
Even if your boss is an idiot act like he is a 5 star tactician general playing 5d chess.
If there is downtime look busy.
Offer to help beyond the job description.
Be professional at all times.
You will be infantalized by management, because thats just how they operate at most places.

I agree that there is an unnecessary infantilization of trainee's in this system and frankly speaking some of my classmates like that or need it.

And I agree that giving responsibility to trainees is a great way to have them learn. But the problem is all of medical school is just one massive exercise of going through the motions. Just like year one and two year three has aspects of it that are going through the motions. You just hope that in going through the motions you learn a thing or two.
 
Show up early.
Leave after your boss.
Act interested.
Dont complain.
Even if your work is meaningless act like it is important and carry it out with seriousness.
Even if your boss is an idiot act like he is a 5 star tactician general playing 5d chess.
If there is downtime look busy.
Offer to help beyond the job description.
Be professional at all times.
You will be infantalized by management, because thats just how they operate at most places.

I agree that there is an unnecessary infantilization of trainee's in this system and frankly speaking some of my classmates like that or need it.

And I agree that giving responsibility to trainees is a great way to have them learn. But the problem is all of medical school is just one massive exercise of going through the motions. Just like year one and two year three has aspects of it that are going through the motions. You just hope that in going through the motions you learn a thing or two.
The American culture at work (for lack of a better word) is centered around people who love to be idolized. It's one of the things one of my roommates told me when I got my first job in the US, and I noticed that instantly. I still can't adapt to that BS after being here for over 15+ years
 
Im not sure what sort of work you did before medical school.
I had the opposite experience. I worked a white collar job prior to medical school and rotations have been fairly easy.
Medical school and Medicine seems to be similarly structured.
Here are some of the untaught things on the curriculum at white collar jobs and medicine that i picked up and have served me well.

Show up early.
Leave after your boss.
Act interested.
*Dont complain.
*Even if your work is meaningless act like it is important and carry it out with seriousness.
*Even if your boss is an idiot act like he is a 5 star tactician general playing 5d chess.
*If there is downtime look busy.

Offer to help beyond the job description.
Be professional at all times.
*You will be infantalized by management, because thats just how they operate at most places.

I agree that there is an unnecessary infantilization of trainee's in this system and frankly speaking some of my classmates like that or need it.

And I agree that giving responsibility to trainees is a great way to have them learn. But the problem is all of medical school is just one massive exercise of going through the motions. Just like year one and two year three has aspects of it that are going through the motions. You just hope that in going through the motions you learn a thing or two.

Just because there were some parallels between white collar work and the medical heirarchy, doesn't mean that the highlighted things *aren't* stupid and shouldn't be done away with. Our brown nosing culture, emphasis on being there just to be there, refusal to allow questioning of management simply because of their position, and allowance of infantilization "just because that's how it is" are all dumb things that contribute to many people hating their jobs and consequently lives. There's a reason that "man Mondays suck, I hate my job, I hate everything, my boss is a tool" is a popular meme in American media.

I will say that showing up early, acting interested, being professional, and offering to go above and beyond to help are still good things that should be encouraged as these foster workplace bonding and help people feel like they have each other's backs, which helps morale. Managers should lead by example and demonstrate that they respect and care about their employees too, as that also encourages those behaviors.
 
Just because there were some parallels between white collar work and the medical heirarchy, doesn't mean that the highlighted things *aren't* stupid and shouldn't be done away with. Our brown nosing culture, emphasis on being there just to be there, refusal to allow questioning of management simply because of their position, and allowance of infantilization "just because that's how it is" are all dumb things that contribute to many people hating their jobs and consequently lives. There's a reason that "man Mondays suck, I hate my job, I hate everything, my boss is a tool" is a popular meme in American media.

I will say that showing up early, acting interested, being professional, and offering to go above and beyond to help are still good things that should be encouraged as these foster workplace bonding and help people feel like they have each other's backs, which helps morale. Managers should lead by example and demonstrate that they respect and care about their employees too, as that also encourages those behaviors.

I never said that this was the right culture to have.In fact i didnt pass any value judgement on the culture at all. But We are not there as agents of cultural change. I definitely had similar sentiments to you in regards to things being stupid the way they were done when i first started my job and i definitely ruffled some feathers the wrong way when i started. But the reality of the situation is , this is a much broader cultural issue and an organizations culture starts with the organizational leadership. And we are students , not even employees. May be when we are in positions of power we can influence the culture of these organizations.

But even with the culture as described you can learn a lot of soft skills on interacting with co-workers, working in a professional setting and learning how to adapt to an organizations culture.

Now if this is a hill you wish to die upon thats understandable, but having worked in dysfunctional organizations before you learn to not die on every hill, and preserve your energy for battles that matter.

Its ok to question superiors, just do so with tact and in situations where patient safety is concerned.

Have to stay late while nothing is going on ? So what, many days at work you will have to do the same.

Having to hold your tongue when someone above you says something idiotic, Going to have to learn to do that or be labeled a trouble maker.

Have to suck up to your boss sometimes? Welcome to human society/nature.

Management makes a stupid rule. The rule is probably the result of someone doing something very stupid and now everyone has to deal with it. Maybe join management and change the rule if you find it too problematic. Or bring it up in a tactful manner.
 
Im not sure what sort of work you did before medical school.
I had the opposite experience. I worked a white collar job prior to medical school and rotations have been fairly easy.
Medical school and Medicine seems to be similarly structured.
Here are some of the untaught things on the curriculum at white collar jobs and medicine that i picked up and have served me well.

Show up early.
Leave after your boss.
Act interested.
Dont complain.
Even if your work is meaningless act like it is important and carry it out with seriousness.
Even if your boss is an idiot act like he is a 5 star tactician general playing 5d chess.
If there is downtime look busy.
Offer to help beyond the job description.
Be professional at all times.
You will be infantalized by management, because thats just how they operate at most places.

I agree that there is an unnecessary infantilization of trainee's in this system and frankly speaking some of my classmates like that or need it.

And I agree that giving responsibility to trainees is a great way to have them learn. But the problem is all of medical school is just one massive exercise of going through the motions. Just like year one and two year three has aspects of it that are going through the motions. You just hope that in going through the motions you learn a thing or two.


From my anecdotal experience at my med school, I've actually found it to be that the older students or those with significant prior life/work experience have a harder time on rotations than med students who went straight through or have little real world experience. Even though all the older generation on SDN swear it's the other way around and that naive med students struggle/complain the most. I think it's because while those with prior experience in the real world understand how hierarchy works, most real world jobs still confer a greater amount of autonomy than rotations. You come in, do your work, then leave generally speaking. The naive med students are so gung ho on getting the best grades/not really used to real autonomy that they become more consumed withgetting the best possible grades and out-competing their peers than worrying that some attending is wasting their time. Basically they're fine with the lack of autonomy and the extreme infantilization because they know no better and just want to impress.

Just my personal experience.
 
From my anecdotal experience at my med school, I've actually found it to be that the older students or those with significant prior life/work experience have a harder time on rotations than med students who went straight through or have little real world experience. Even though all the older generation on SDN swear it's the other way around and that naive med students struggle/complain the most. I think it's because while those with prior experience in the real world understand how hierarchy works, most real world jobs still confer a greater amount of autonomy than rotations. You come in, do your work, then leave generally speaking. The naive med students are so gung ho on getting the best grades/not really used to real autonomy that they become more consumed withgetting the best possible grades and out-competing their peers than worrying that some attending is wasting their time. Basically they're fine with the lack of autonomy and the extreme infantilization because they know no better and just want to impress.

Just my personal experience.
Maybe, but thats not really the case at my school and my experience. There are outliers, and not all non-trads are great. But a few years of life experience completely shows.
 
From my anecdotal experience at my med school, I've actually found it to be that the older students or those with significant prior life/work experience have a harder time on rotations than med students who went straight through or have little real world experience. Even though all the older generation on SDN swear it's the other way around and that naive med students struggle/complain the most. I think it's because while those with prior experience in the real world understand how hierarchy works, most real world jobs still confer a greater amount of autonomy than rotations. You come in, do your work, then leave generally speaking. The naive med students are so gung ho on getting the best grades/not really used to real autonomy that they become more consumed withgetting the best possible grades and out-competing their peers than worrying that some attending is wasting their time. Basically they're fine with the lack of autonomy and the extreme infantilization because they know no better and just want to impress.

Just my personal experience.
Yeah I've seen the opposite in my experience too...the older people know the heirarchy and know how to kiss ass when you need to. They also kinda know simple professional things like showing up on time, acting interested, and not always asking to be leaving early. It's actually been astounding to see some of the more naive people try to complain about things that are very normal for a job. Like the fact that you actually have to work and you can't just get every holiday/weekend/etc off. It's the same people that are currently complaining about how deans and medical schools don't have everything perfect for us during this crazy time. Like its an unprecedented thing that would be ridiculed if they spent time and money on it before it was necessary cmon now. Some people moreso than others.

This isn't a blanket statement, just what I've noticed both in my previous clinical work and now.
 
Yeah I've seen the opposite in my experience too...the older people know the heirarchy and know how to kiss ass when you need to. They also kinda know simple professional things like showing up on time, acting interested, and not always asking to be leaving early. It's actually been astounding to see some of the more naive people try to complain about things that are very normal for a job. Like the fact that you actually have to work and you can't just get every holiday/weekend/etc off. It's the same people that are currently complaining about how deans and medical schools don't have everything perfect for us during this crazy time. Like its an unprecedented thing that would be ridiculed if they spent time and money on it before it was necessary cmon now. Some people moreso than others.

This isn't a blanket statement, just what I've noticed both in my previous clinical work and now.
As far as habits go, obviously you have to be there early, I mean you should be doing that with everything in life in general. But working holidays and weekends as a medical student seems unnecessary. INB4TROLLGANG - bUt HoW wILL U knOW hOW to WOrK HaRd IF u nEvEr WoRkEd A HOLiDaY!!!!!!!!!
 
As far as habits go, obviously you have to be there early, I mean you should be doing that with everything in life in general. But working holidays and weekends as a medical student seems unnecessary. INB4TROLLGANG - bUt HoW wILL U knOW hOW to WOrK HaRd IF u nEvEr WoRkEd A HOLiDaY!!!!!!!!!
Oh I agree it’s unnecessary for the most part. But the current system (mostly) is set up so you do have to work them. And incessantly complaining about it while you’re at the hospital just makes everyone on the team miserable. I guess that’s what I’m more talking about
 
Anecdotally now as an intern that has had maybe N=15 med students rotate on our team I haven't noticed a significant difference between non-trads and the younger ones. On the whole some have been terrible: they show no interest, don't take any initiative, complain, try to leave early and dodge going to the OR. Others are rockstars: they appear genuinely interested even if going into something unrelated, take initiative to do things like seeing patients on their own for pre-rounding or in clinic, writing notes, tracking what needs to be done for the day like drain pulls and wound care and then grabbing supplies and offering to help, going to all scheduled OR cases etc etc. Most fall somewhere in between and do a satisfactory job and are pleasant but are unmemorable. Both the worst and the best MS3s this year have been non-trad. With a larger N there may certainly be differences. Yet it's still surprising when someone, younger or especially non-trad, comes on service later in the year and still doesn't get it... like at all.
 
Maybe, I still think we're one of the more respected professions out there. I just think respect for everyone has gone down.
Benefit of living in the South for sure. The patients respect you. They just don't respect themselves enough to take your advice. Great job security though.
 
I worked 32ish hours per week in undergrad. In my gap year I held 2 jobs and worked around 60-72 hours per week (depending on if I worked Sundays or not). It wasn't hard but it was draining. Especially because I didn't particularly care for my jobs and didn't get paid very well. However, I learned to budget very tight and learned what was a necessary expense and what wasn't. Its also allowed me to see that studying every day is much cooler than working dead end jobs. I enjoy medical school. I miss bringing in a paycheck tremendously but I wouldn't go back.
 
Maybe, but thats not really the case at my school and my experience. There are outliers, and not all non-trads are great. But a few years of life experience completely shows.

That's fair. My point wasn't to make it seem that my anecdotal experience is representative of the entire truth. I just suspect that these generalizations we draw on here aren't as true as we may think. But who knows...
 
Yeah I've seen the opposite in my experience too...the older people know the heirarchy and know how to kiss ass when you need to. They also kinda know simple professional things like showing up on time, acting interested, and not always asking to be leaving early. It's actually been astounding to see some of the more naive people try to complain about things that are very normal for a job. Like the fact that you actually have to work and you can't just get every holiday/weekend/etc off. It's the same people that are currently complaining about how deans and medical schools don't have everything perfect for us during this crazy time. Like its an unprecedented thing that would be ridiculed if they spent time and money on it before it was necessary cmon now. Some people moreso than others.

This isn't a blanket statement, just what I've noticed both in my previous clinical work and now.

Fair man. I am at a fairly prestigious med school, so I haven't seen that lazy behavior that is so abundantly described on here (not saying it doesn't exist at my program because it does and I've seen it, but I'm saying the norm is that most trad med students here are either impressive as hell or just decently hard working). Most of my peers are passionate about performing well on rotations and about medicine in general and tend to be highly regarded by residency programs based on the data. Yeah, there are some lazy youth in the world, but they exist at every grad school, med or not. I just think chronic SDN users tend to take a small sample of people and act is if they represent young med students as a whole. A lot of passive aggression that the older generation (and sometimes the younger gen) use this site to release on each other....
 
Fair man. I am at a fairly prestigious med school, so I haven't seen that lazy behavior that is so abundantly described on here (not saying it doesn't exist at my program because it does and I've seen it, but I'm saying the norm is that most trad med students here are either impressive as hell or just decently hard working). Most of my peers are passionate about performing well on rotations and about medicine in general and tend to be highly regarded by residency programs based on the data. Yeah, there are some lazy youth in the world, but they exist at every grad school, med or not. I just think chronic SDN users tend to take a small sample of people and act is if they represent young med students as a whole. A lot of passive aggression that the older generation (and sometimes the younger gen) use this site to release on each other....
Idk man I’m 27 an M3. Idk about “older crowd being passive aggressive”. It’s plainly obvious the immaturity sometimes. You don’t always know what you come off like if you’re stuck at that level. It isn’t their fault, they just haven’t had the life experiences that can show.
But like I’ve said, it isn’t everyone
 
Anecdotally now as an intern that has had maybe N=15 med students rotate on our team I haven't noticed a significant difference between non-trads and the younger ones. On the whole some have been terrible: they show no interest, don't take any initiative, complain, try to leave early and dodge going to the OR. Others are rockstars: they appear genuinely interested even if going into something unrelated, take initiative to do things like seeing patients on their own for pre-rounding or in clinic, writing notes, tracking what needs to be done for the day like drain pulls and wound care and then grabbing supplies and offering to help, going to all scheduled OR cases etc etc. Most fall somewhere in between and do a satisfactory job and are pleasant but are unmemorable. Both the worst and the best MS3s this year have been non-trad. With a larger N there may certainly be differences. Yet it's still surprising when someone, younger or especially non-trad, comes on service later in the year and still doesn't get it... like at all.
Idk man I’m 27 an M3. Idk about “older crowd being passive aggressive”. It’s plainly obvious the immaturity sometimes. You don’t always know what you come off like if you’re stuck at that level. It isn’t their fault, they just haven’t had the life experiences that can show.
But like I’ve said, it isn’t everyone

For sure man. I'm 30 and an M4. Trust me, I'm not a some young kid on here trying to stick up for the youth. I just think the generational wars on here are pretty lame and frankly detached from reality. But if you want to think that way about people younger than you to establish some sort of superiority, I can't stop you.
 
For sure man. I'm 30 and an M4. Trust me, I'm not a some young kid on here trying to stick up for the youth. I just think the generational wars on here are pretty lame and frankly detached from reality. But if you want to think that way about people younger than you to establish some sort of superiority, I can't stop you.
I definitely don't think its a hard and fast rule, and I said so in my previous post. It's more just something that I'm not the only one to notice. I personally don't care about superiority or anything of the sort. Just adding my n=1 not trying to start an age war
 
I definitely don't think its a hard and fast rule, and I said so in my previous post. It's more just something that I'm not the only one to notice. I personally don't care about superiority or anything of the sort. Just adding my n=1 not trying to start an age war

Fair enough. There's probably truth on both sides with the answer being somewhere in the middle.
 
I never encouraged or discouraged my son to go into Medicine.
He knew it would entail hard work and many missed family occasions.
I was surprised and very happy when he elected to apply to medical school, and I feel honored that he wants to go into the same specialty I practice.
 
Case in point to my immaturity comment before...there’s a huge uproar in my class that people missed their higher grades because they either didn’t log enough patient cases or logged them incorrectly. All the emails complaining and fb posts are laughable. All it takes is counting and reading the syllabus people take responsibility for yourself...
 
Case in point to my immaturity comment before...there’s a huge uproar in my class that people missed their higher grades because they either didn’t log enough patient cases or logged them incorrectly. All the emails complaining and fb posts are laughable. All it takes is counting and reading the syllabus people take responsibility for yourself...

This is unprofessional. Reporting you to the school admin
 
what liabilities?



parents mostly influence. not many CONTROL. do they exist? yes. but not really talking about the small numbers here
The level of responsibility is very high for a resident physician and they do get sued too. Much higher level of responsibility than most other jobs
 
Things could be better, but most of us are not miserable...
 
Just because there were some parallels between white collar work and the medical heirarchy, doesn't mean that the highlighted things *aren't* stupid and shouldn't be done away with. Our brown nosing culture, emphasis on being there just to be there, refusal to allow questioning of management simply because of their position, and allowance of infantilization "just because that's how it is" are all dumb things that contribute to many people hating their jobs and consequently lives. There's a reason that "man Mondays suck, I hate my job, I hate everything, my boss is a tool" is a popular meme in American media.

I will say that showing up early, acting interested, being professional, and offering to go above and beyond to help are still good things that should be encouraged as these foster workplace bonding and help people feel like they have each other's backs, which helps morale. Managers should lead by example and demonstrate that they respect and care about their employees too, as that also encourages those behaviors.
I don't even want above and beyond. I would like my front desk assistant to do her job. She's been at it for six months...I thought you get better with time...
 
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