Question for doctors with engineering degrees

[LongApple]

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Why did you want to switch from engineering to medicine?

I don't view it as switching - it's just undergraduate education. However, I do hear this question sometimes and I imagine you might have been asked about it during the interview.

I think for the interview, the thing is not to answer above as I did or even talk about engineering much but instead to just talk about the positive unique aspects of medicine / why you are a good fit for medicine. And answer it as if they had asked "why would you be a good fit for medicine"

These are my thoughts on what the interviewer is thinking about/trying to test. What are your thoughts?

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Unrelated to the above for other people just visiting this post, I was curious if this gets asked with other majors.

Ex:
Biology, chemistry, history

"Why don't you want to be a biologist/chemist/historian instead of a doctor instead? Why are you switching?"

Did they really ask you this during the interview?

 

[500miles]

I feel that what you major in (besides nursing maybe) is not really questioned that much. I think that you have to do enough medicine related classes/ECs(shadowing, volunteering) surrounding your education that tells the story of why you picked medicine. I would say that having a very off topic major that you like may be asked about because they are interested in you and your passions. As long as you have good reasons for medicine and have proved that you can succeed academically and professionally, your major wont be questioned negatively.

Edit: I also wanted to add that I have a very research heavy emphasis on my application and I come from a biology major. I was asked why not research a couple times. I took the strategy of saying that it was a hard decision because I love research, but I wanted medicine overall. So I did end up talking about my interest in biology a lot and I think that they liked that.

 

[RNtoMD87]

I still don’t get why your job isn’t questioned unless its nursing. That’s so annoying. I could hassle someone about “why did you go engineering if you don’t want to build things?”

People change their minds. We grow as people and realize that a job doesn’t provide us with as much satisfaction as we had hoped in some form or another. Why do adcoms think we nurses are so stupid/unobservant that after working with doctors for years that we still don’t know the difference in our scopes/differences in NP/PA and MD.

Are respiratory therapists, PT/OT/ST, X-ray technicians, etc also questioned like this? “I thought you wanted to do X-rays, now you’re wanting to be a doctor?”

 

[500miles]

I still don’t get why your job isn’t questioned unless its nursing. That’s so annoying. I could hassle someone about “why did you go engineering if you don’t want to build things?”

People change their minds. We grow as people and realize that a job doesn’t provide us with as much satisfaction as we had hoped in some form or another. Why do adcoms think we nurses are so stupid/unobservant that after working with doctors for years that we still don’t know the difference in our scopes/differences in NP/PA and MD.

Are respiratory therapists, PT/OT/ST, X-ray technicians, etc also questioned like this? “I thought you wanted to do X-rays, now you’re wanting to be a doctor?”

I think the 2 main reasons are how much that position is needed in the real world, and limited seats for training within those degrees. There are others that get similar flack as well, such as medical lab science programs. These types of programs are attractive for pre med because they fulfill premed requirements and are also very relevant to medicine. However, both MLS and nursing are highly needed professions and usually have very limited seats to fill. These types of programs also emphasize teaching the practical part ( lab tech stuff, nursing rotations) which use a lot of resources. I think it is mostly frowned upon to use these programs as a stepping stone to med school as opposed to having a genuine change in your interests though.

 

[RNtoMD87]

I guess I just don’t understand how you owe anything to the profession. We pay for school, pay for our licensure, put in the work. It should be up to us what we do with it. Many of my fellow students did nursing school and never even became a nurse. They act like letting us go to nursing school is charity, no we pay for it, and then we work FREE many hours during clinicals.

 

[500miles]

I guess I just don’t understand how you owe anything to the profession. We pay for school, pay for our licensure, put in the work. It should be up to us what we do with it. Many of my fellow students did nursing school and never even became a nurse. They act like letting us go to nursing school is charity, no we pay for it, and then we work FREE many hours during clinicals.

In some ways I do agree with you since we pay for every part of our education. But I also can understand why they encourage picking those fields as the end goal. Once again, very few will give you a hard time about going down the nursing path and then deciding to change along the way. But if they encouraged premeds in anyway to use these programs as stepping stones it would be a huge waste of seats for people dedicated to those professions. Especially given that premeds are overachievers who are fully capable of out competing many other students. And who doesnt want to have fun working in the hospital or lab learning practical things instead of a degree that is purely theoretical? So overall I see why they discourage it as a pathway to medicine.

 

[RNtoMD87]

I think in a way it’s beneficial since med school has a major clinical component, and I fail to see how strictly academics demonstrates competence in the hospital. We’ve all seen those people who are book smart as hell, but put them in a high stress environment (like a code), and they freeze. I feel that demonstrating capability through experience, as well as academia (premed curriculum and MCAT) should demonstrate a strong candidate.

This is probably the biggest resident related complaint I see from fellow ICU nurses, relating to codes. Especially our hospitalist residents. I’ve seen more than a couple get flustered. I feel experience is key. Even with basic knowledge limited pretty much to the ACLS algorithm, repetition of hundreds of codes cements the “flow” to where it becomes habit. You know to anticipate bicarb, or mag, and you know when the next epi will be due, whether to shock etc without having to think about it (except in some situations like we had yesterday where you reach the end of the algorithm and you have a room full of cards, pulm, and hospital medicine, scratching their head trying to think of something else to try)

 

[500miles]

I think in a way it’s beneficial since med school has a major clinical component, and I fail to see how strictly academics demonstrates competence in the hospital. We’ve all seen those people who are book smart as hell, but put them in a high stress environment (like a code), and they freeze. I feel that demonstrating capability through experience, as well as academia (premed curriculum and MCAT) should demonstrate a strong candidate.

This is probably the biggest resident related complaint I see from fellow ICU nurses, relating to codes. Especially our hospitalist residents. I’ve seen more than a couple get flustered. I feel experience is key. Even with basic knowledge limited pretty much to the ACLS algorithm, repetition of hundreds of codes cements the “flow” to where it becomes habit. You know to anticipate bicarb, or mag, and you know when the next epi will be due, whether to shock etc without having to think about it (except in some situations like we had yesterday where you reach the end of the algorithm and you have a room full of cards, pulm, and hospital medicine, scratching their head trying to think of something else to try)

Your not wrong in that it can be valuable experience, but it is not sustainable to have people use this route due to the impact on those pursuing those professions.

 

[RNtoMD87]

I think the best indicator is simply for adcoms to ask about the impact they feel they made, and about what they did. Two people could volunteer doing identical things but have vastly different results/experiences.