What you're really asking is whether medicine is as fun and fulfilling as you want and imagine it to be which is a legitimate question for a pre-med student to ask. The fact that you think it would be a worthwhile career if it paid next to nothing reveals the limits of your "reference frame." Because you are a student and have probably never had a valuable skill or done any productive work of any sort, you are projecting your current opinions and expectations onto the next seven to twelve years of your life. To date, the only criterion you have to evaluate an activity is whether entails fun or fills some non-financial need in your life. This is why pre-meds are so proud of their volunteer work among the Holy Underserved, that is, because while it may pay nothing and require no skill whatsoever, it is immensely gratifying.
Medicine can be a fun and fulfilling career. It certainly has its moments even though most of American Medicine is complete bull****. Somewhere, however, between your first day of medical school and your residency medicine stops being a calling or a lark or an exercise in self-fulfillment and becomes a job. You'd go through medical school if it paid minimum wage because, and stop me if this is obvious, you aren't making a dime but are instead hemorrhaging money continuously for four years. Hell, minimum wage would be nice even though it would not be necessary because medical school, in a strange way, is mostly fun. You're not doing any productive work, you have no responsibility to anyone but yourself, and nothing is expected of you.
The hospital will not seize up fall apart if the medical students disappeared I mean. You are not even a factor during first and second year and during third year and fourth year, at the very best you are nothing but a useless appendage writing insanely long H&Ps that nobody ever reads and chugging away at useless scutwork.
Then you hit your intern year and now is is a job with strict hours, responsibility, and the need to perform. It's not so much fun anymore not for the least of which reasons that you are starting to get tired of your patients and their complaints. When you're a pre-med you dream of giving service, Mother Theresa-like, to the Saintly Underprivileged Who Are Without Stain Or Blemish. As a resident, you will grow to resent the stupid mother****er who sat on his couch all day smoking crack and at 5AM decided to call the ambulance for some vague chest pain that he has had for the last week. No sooner have you put your head down on your pillow in the call room after a call night of mostly ridiculous admissions hoping to get an hour or two of sleep before morning rounds when you are paged down to the Emergency Department to listen to his idiotic story and admit his sorry ass.
Then it's just a job and you will regret mightily not throwing your medical school application in the trash when you had the chance. And you will laugh to think that you ever thought you'd do this sort of thing for the rest of your life for what Taco Bell pays.
