Is getting into medical school a curse or a blessing??

[TheRealDrDorian]

If you have any doubts about becoming a doctor, just realize that the job you will be doing has more personal meaning to you than any other job can.

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[Chuckwalla]

Of course being accepted to medical school is a blessing.

I am a pre-med, and I am absolutely thrilled at the prospect of attending med school, especially my state school (UAB) which is super research intensive.

Medicine is a wonderful field -- especially, I think, if you end up at an academic research center, which is my goal. In particular, the prospect of being able to research pathophysiology of an illness is so fascinating. You're not just treating an illness -- you're defining the illness on the molecular level. How cool is that? How cool is it to be able to work in a lab one day defining an illness and then treating someone with that illness the next day at your clinic? You're being a solution to the problem on all fronts.

So, yes, medicine is a wonderful field. It provides a good living, is intellectually stimulating, provides enough training to work in academia and a clinic, and allows you to be a solution to health problems on all fronts (in my case, I hope to become a psychiatrist, so depression is my main interest).

Whoa whoa whoa. Hold the phone. You seem to have a highly romaticized view of medicine that looks at only the positives. Medicine has tons of negatives and I highly recommend you look into them before you make this life decision. It's like getting married. Are you going to marry someone just looking at the positives? Hell no. Let me name the negatives I can think of just off the top of my head.

-Long training
-Lots of debt
-New doctors are treated like dog food
-Physician pay is declining
-Most work long hours
-Very high stress for the most part
-The threat of being sued, most docs are at least once
-Malpractice insurance
-Patients expect miracles and will be quite disgruntled if they don't get them
-Doctors do tons of paper work, sometimes more often than seeing patients
-The field is very cutthroat, don't expect a bunch of happy people who just want to do something interesting and help people

You said you want to go into academic medicine which even more competitive. Not only are you going up against other MDs but you are going against an overabundance of PhDs with bio degrees. If you do get an academic medicine job most of it is paper work and grant writing with you having to constantly show why what you want to do is worthwhile. It has to be worthwhile to many, whether is is worthwhile to you isn't much of a concern.

Of course there are many positives to medicine which you should look at with the negatives. Don't just look at one side.

 

[dutchman]

Whoa whoa whoa. Hold the phone. You seem to have a highly romaticized view of medicine that looks at only the positives. Medicine has tons of negatives and I highly recommend you look into them before you make this life decision. It's like getting married. Are you going to marry someone just looking at the positives? Hell no. Let me name the negatives I can think of just off the top of my head.

-Long training
-Lots of debt
-New doctors are treated like dog food
-Physician pay is declining
-Most work long hours
-Very high stress for the most part
-The threat of being sued, most docs are at least once
-Malpractice insurance
-Patients expect miracles and will be quite disgruntled if they don't get them
-Doctors do tons of paper work, sometimes more often than seeing patients
-The field is very cutthroat, don't expect a bunch of happy people who just want to do something interesting and help people

You said you want to go into academic medicine which even more competitive. Not only are you going up against other MDs but you are going against an overabundance of PhDs with bio degrees. If you do get an academic medicine job most of it is paper work and grant writing with you having to constantly show why what you want to do is worthwhile. It has to be worthwhile to many, whether is is worthwhile to you isn't much of a concern.

Of course there are many positives to medicine which you should look at with the negatives. Don't just look at one side.

for a second I thought your list was not going to end.