I've been out of academia for close to 5 years
You'll want to take a class or two to show you can still handle being in the classroom. Since your academic bona fines are very strong, it doesn't matter what you take or where, just get a couple of fresh grades. Undergrad is fine. Astronomy, Latin, genetics, microbio, doesn't really matter.
You need letters of recommendation from faculty who taught you in science classes, and if you can't get those from your prior studies, then you need to get letters out of fresh coursework. Generally you want 3-4 science faculty letters and a non-science faculty letter. An employer letter is good as well but there's no assumption that an employer has any clue what med school preparedness requires (vs science faculty). Med schools specify how many letters they want.
, so I'd probably have to brush up to take the MCAT.
Yes. That means spending the time and money to do rigorous content review
and test prep. Usually that means spending $1500 - $2500 on a course (online or classroom) but you can find study programs detailed in the MCAT forum.
I have been volunteering at my local hospital for 3 months and plan on doing so indefinitely.
Good. Look for, and take advantage of, opportunities to get 1:1 time with physicians in clinic or in the OR. One major objective of clinical experience prior to med school is to look for reasons
not to go to med school. Such as that you maybe really don't like being in a hospital. Such as that you maybe can't stand having to work on a mixed-discipline team. Such as that you maybe hate sick people. Such as that you maybe don't actually want to be without income for 7-10 years.
Get to the places such as the physician lounge where you can listen to old docs opine about how good things used to be and how screwed up everything is now - and then dilute their opinions with your own analysis of health care delivery. You should be reading at least one major newspaper's health section
every day (such as NYT, WSJ, WaPo). There are many ways to get up to speed: read books, start following ASlavitt on twitter (former head of CMS), never miss an Atul Gawande piece, etc. Find and read things that challenge you. Find and read things by people with whom you disagree. Absolutely nothing on major news outlets is useful - you will learn nothing from CNN, Fox, MSNBC etc.
What? You're interested in the science, but the stuff about politics and healthcare delivery aren't interesting? That's fine if you are willing to let other people determine all of the terms of your employment and the scope of your practice as a physician. That's fine if you don't care what state or county you will study, train or live in. That's fine if you're willing to find out after 7-10 years of training without income that your basic understanding of the business of medicine is completely off.
I currently make decent money (~$70k per year). If I were to attend med school, how would I be able to fund day-to-day expenses?
Student loans in med school cover living expenses. Each med school publishes a budget based on cost of living in the area, and you can borrow up to that budget. It's very important to not have consumer debt going into med school - you can't cover a car loan or credit card debt. Having a way to make some income is a huge asset, if you're able to use your current employment to get a gig now and then.
I've filled out my FAFSA in grad school and I recall it asks for your income for the previous year to determine family contribution. As I said earlier, I make ~$70k, but in med school I would be making $0. Would my previous year's income affect my ability to get federal loan assistance?
Family contribution is not taken into consideration for federal loans for professional school such as MD/DO/DDS/DMD. Your and your family's income only matter for school-specific aid such as the various $1500 per year "Dr Joe Memorial" scholarships that the alumni orgs fund. Free ride or mostly-free ride scholarships are rare.
I know you have to take out a lot of loans to go to med school, and that after med school you are required to complete an internship and a residency. I also know interning and residency pay very little. Can you get student loans put on deferment/forbearance during internship and residency?
Yes. As it stands, there are a few basic strategies for student loan debt management in residency that should be fairly stable regardless of whether we're at war with China or if there's a Calexit etc. You can defer/forbear but that's a mistake - you'll want to be in an income-based repayment plan that has interest subsidies and eventual forgiveness. Down the road you will need to learn whatever the repayment plans are. For now if you summarily understand REPAYE and maybe PSLF, that's enough.
The area of medicine I want to specialize in is anesthesiology. I know that there is a shortage of anesthesiologists in the country. Are there any scholarships/special loans for people who plan on pursuing this specialty?
Don't go to med school if there's only one thing you'd be happy with on the other side. It's considered cute when premeds already know what they want to be, because you have no exposure yet to what it's like to bear all-day all-night responsibility for patients. Sometimes a premed ambition holds steady, but it's not the norm, and you may or may not do well enough in med school to get to choose.
Meanwhile, you need to know what a CRNA is, and you need to decide if hiring/firing/managing CRNAs is what you want to do for a big chunk of your career.
There are no doctor shortages in desirable locations. Premeds don't get scholarships to become a specific specialty because there's no guarantee you'll match in that specialty. There are location-specific scholarship/loan programs that usually require a primary care specialty, and usually require a number of years of practice in that location after residency. Primary care is FM/IM/Peds, sometimes psych, occasionally gen surg or ObGyn.
In general, if you borrow federal loans to get through med school, you'll be one of a massive horde of fresh docs with $250k+ debt loads. At least 10k out of the 35k new docs per year are crippled by student debt. Nothing's unimaginable now, but generally as long as there are lobbyists protecting industries that depend on fresh docs (AMA, big pharm, hospitals, ins cos etc) it will be hard for the govmint to abandon indebted residents.
Best of luck to you.
