If you could go back in time would you do it all over again?

[Redpancreas]

Hello,

I am 22 and will be entering my first year of medical school this fall and am getting a little nervous. Today a friend of mine who is currently in med school posted a video on facebook (I believe from KevinMD) that says the majority of physicians regret going to medical school (due to stress, debt etc.). I was wondering if a lot of current medical students, residents or attending physicians actually feel that way and figured this would be a good place to ask. If you could go back in time would you do it all over again?

Thanks

I'd love to go back in time if I could relive the past three years with my memory intact but my age decreased by 3. So many things I would have done differently as I was so naive back then. It's hard to explain but basically having been in a school environment my whole life, my first clinical year really changed my perspective in life. Would I have made the same choice if I could see this vantage point entering high school? Probably...Sadly, there was nothing else marketable (math/physics, business, economics, coding, etc.) that I was very good at and inexplicably I latched onto Biology when it started building on itself. Medicine presents an opportunity for reasonably smart, balanced, but most importantly hard-working individuals to earn a very good living while actually making a difference (even if it sometimes seems subtle) in someone's life.

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[aformerstudent]

I would have picked a different career and a different approach to college when I was 18 when I saw the warning signs that science wasn't my strong point.

 

[Entadus]

100% no. The BS in medicine is huge. you choose to go into medicine in your early 20s/late teens, b/c you want to help ppl. but then you realize a lot of it is total BS. You spend 200k+ on med school on top of undergrad, learning stuff that most of us wont use again, get treated like crap. It continues in residency where employment rules barely even apply to you. And finally you are an attending and you are old, tired, prob took a -10 year life span for all the crap you dealt thru the 10 yrs prior, all the junk food, the sleepless nights, stress, etc. You are in a **** ton of debt, you are behind on all the life stuff, you realize all your friends are way ahead of you, personally and financially. Hopefully you dont come out of residency with some health issues

And in residency, you realize there's a ton of politics and bureaucracy in the hospital. Tons of useless BS protocols some person w/o a medical background wrote up. you also realize your 23 yr old PA colleagues and NPs make twice as much as you do working half the hours. 12 hr shifts x3 per WEEK, making 100k with barely any responsibilities, with plenty of time to go out w friends, to the gym, etc.
We recently opened up nursing overnight shifts as moonlight for residents because we cant get nurses who want to do them. It's paid 125 per HOUR. Residents fight for these shifts that nurses dont even want.

hilarious and sad but true