Regretting Medical School

Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine
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dr.grenouille

dr.grenouille

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Does anyone ever regret going to medical school? Like you think it’s what you really want but you become more stressed out than you expected and lose relationships and don’t even end up in a speciality that you like. Or it’s like always worth it no matter what? I think I’m just letting my pre-first year nerves get to me!
 
It’s worth it. Residency is fun. Practice is fun. No more stress than anything else you’d do. It’s all normative. You’d have good days and **** days in accounting, teaching, art procurement or medicine. Pay is good. Respect is nice. Window into people’s lives and idiosyncratic ways is fascinating and a rare human experience. I’m finishing up intern year at big academic grind IM program as a prelim going into other specialty. Also in the year they reinstated 30 hour shifts. Still happy. I’m sure intern year in GS might not be worth it to me because I’m soft, but I was afforded the choice not to do it. Chill and stick with it.
 
dr.grenouille said:
Does anyone ever regret going to medical school? Like you think it’s what you really want but you become more stressed out than you expected and lose relationships and don’t even end up in a speciality that you like. Or it’s like always worth it no matter what? I think I’m just letting my pre-first year nerves get to me!
Click to expand...

Yes, a not insignificant amount of people regret going into medicine -- sometimes temporarily/intermittently and sometimes permanently. Very few things in life are "worth it no matter what", that's way too much of a blanket statement. You have to sacrifice a good amount of things to become and then work as a doctor, but many people find it to be rewarding and ultimately worth it.

Not sure what you want to hear, but those are my honest answers to the questions you asked.
 
Yes I regret it. There are so many easier options such as Physician assistant that makes good pay but does not take as long. Also, a lot of people in medicine have tunnel vision. A lot of their lives revolve only around medicine and many are sticklers. Many sit at home, watch only Netflix everyday, talk about Grey's anatomy and think they are getting cool points for reading House of God. Personally I love to travel to different countries, party hard, and meet new people. Many people in medicine are not risk takers in no shape or form (with money, travel, social interactions, nothing). You will see this as you progress. Get a life outside of medicine man and try to not hang around your colleagues as much. You will see your life transform for the better as mine did
 
It's a concern for all of us, at some point. But if you did your homework and are fluid about your choices / residency prospect, I think it's a worth it. Then again, I'm someone who made a career switched so YMMV. I knew I was going to be in a **** ton of debt, lost out on a lot of my late 20s and early 30s. But going in I knew that I would be happy in almost all of the fields of medicine including FM and IM, excluding rads and path. Now I'm finishing MS2, have 2 more years and plan on doing FM. So I'll be an attending at the age of 34. To me, at the age of 34 with a six fig salary and $200K debt is not that bad of a gig. Do I enjoy everything about this journey? F88K no! But I have absolutely no regrets....so far lol.
 
There was a several month period during MS2 when I was having serious doubts about medical school regularly. The grind of the pre-clinical curriculum becomes quite the beatdown and you don't get the "payoff" of actual clinical work which can remind you of why you went to medical school in the first place.

I love my work now. Residency was busier and more stressful in some ways than medical school but, on the whole, I've found it a lot more enjoyable.

I think what you're going through is pretty par for the course for most folks.
 
Med school (especially the first 3 years) suck. 3rd year is nice though, because you get a glimpse of what it's like to actually take care of patients. Although sometimes (most of the time) you feel like you're not really doing anything.

Residency is a lot better because you're actually doing stuff, your notes/decision making gets taken into account, and decision you make directly affect the patients.

I hated my life every couple of weeks in med school. As a resident though, even when I'm working 100 hours a week, I don't really hate my life. Yeah, it sucks, but I feel like at least there's a purpose to my misery.

I don't know if that helped. All I can say is, either stick with it long term and you'll probably be happy, or get out now. Don't be like one resident recently who made it to the 3rd year of an IM residency and decided he just couldn't do it anymore.
 
Perhaps some of the most motivational experiences I had were working as a grocery bagger/cart retriever at a grocery store and at Walmart. After those experiences it’s hard to complain about work as a physician.

It’s also interesting and humbling to think about doing those jobs at $6.25/hour and netting all of $30 after an 8-hour shift of somewhat physical work. Now I can moonlight and sit on my ass and get paid $110/hour. Again, it makes it hard to complain - perspective is valuable.
 
NickNaylor said:
It’s also interesting and humbling to think about doing those jobs at $6.25/hour and netting all of $30 after an 8-hour shift of somewhat physical work. Now I can moonlight and sit on my ass and get paid $110/hour. Again, it makes it hard to complain - perspective is valuable.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I also worked in college, mostly in a warehouse unloading and loading trucks. It definitely is a good perspective to have when you get older and have money. I think lot's of people that never worked like that say things like "if they'd just work harder, they'd be able to afford _____." But until you've actually worked a job like that you don't realize how hard it is on you physically, and for not a lot of pay. I dunno where I'm going with this.
 
Tigerhawk77 said:
It’s worth it. Residency is fun. Practice is fun. No more stress than anything else you’d do. It’s all normative. You’d have good days and **** days in accounting, teaching, art procurement or medicine. Pay is good. Respect is nice. Window into people’s lives and idiosyncratic ways is fascinating and a rare human experience. I’m finishing up intern year at big academic grind IM program as a prelim going into other specialty. Also in the year they reinstated 30 hour shifts. Still happy. I’m sure intern year in GS might not be worth it to me because I’m soft, but I was afforded the choice not to do it. Chill and stick with it.
Click to expand...

Dude what on earth are you talking about. You haven't even started medical school and you're telling people that it's no more stress than anything else you'd do?

Stop. Please. You have no idea what you're talking about and you should not be telling people what school, residency, and practice are like. You haven't done any of them, and I suspect you have little to no experience doing any of the other things either.

Stop.
 
OP here is a practical idea. Take a leave of absence and do something else for a year. See how that works out, if you like the other thing better than withdraw from medical school.
 
jonnythan said:
Dude what on earth are you talking about. You haven't even started medical school and you're telling people that it's no more stress than anything else you'd do?

Stop. Please. You have no idea what you're talking about and you should not be telling people what school, residency, and practice are like. You haven't done any of them, and I suspect you have little to no experience doing any of the other things either.

Stop.
Click to expand...

Dude he said he’s a first year resident.


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A
OrthoTraumaMD said:
Dude he said he’s a first year resident.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile
Click to expand...
Also, I can't read. Says he's premed in the avatar field. Still disagree with him regardless. It's not all the same stress as anything else. I worked another real career in IT for a decade and even just medical school is a different universe of stress and pressure.
 
The training is terrible and giving up the remainder of my 20s and early 30s was no small thing. I really had to work hard to get to a point where I felt clinically sound and sure of my place so it resulted in a huge delay in the other parts of my life.

While I still have my complaints there are many things to like about the end result. I once had a bad day at work and ended up calling an inhouse recruiter elsewhere. "When do you want to interview?" they asked me 10 minutes later after telling me the six figure salary. I'm treated fairly well at work, I'm in the process of getting a faculty appointment at the nearby medical school without any sacrifice to my salary, and my colleagues aren't dumb like the office-space people I worked with before medical school. The clinical work plus teaching makes the day go by pretty quickly. Also, the amount of money I'll have after the student loans are paid off is a big deal. Things like groceries, gas, going out to movies, restaurants require no thought at all. Saving up for vacation involves one month of planning at most. Parents have unexpected expenses? Siblings have unexpected expenses? If you have the desire to, you can help them.
 
It was this or be that Indian guy who isn't a doctor so his fam has to go through a laundry list of their accomplishments for them to be accepted... so nah, no regrets.
 
Thanks everyone, this was really helpful!! Just to be clear, I’m definitely starting this year and know it’s 100% what I want to do (after TWO gap years) 😉. Just have moments of worry sometimes, which I’ve heard is fairly normal at this point.
 
jonnythan said:
Dude what on earth are you talking about. You haven't even started medical school and you're telling people that it's no more stress than anything else you'd do?

Stop. Please. You have no idea what you're talking about and you should not be telling people what school, residency, and practice are like. You haven't done any of them, and I suspect you have little to no experience doing any of the other things either.

Stop.
Click to expand...

If that's true it should be reported. Spreading misinformation and lying about stage of training is dangerous to a site that has anonymity built into its core.
 
dr.grenouille said:
Does anyone ever regret going to medical school? Like you think it’s what you really want but you become more stressed out than you expected and lose relationships and don’t even end up in a speciality that you like. Or it’s like always worth it no matter what? I think I’m just letting my pre-first year nerves get to me!
Click to expand...
Eh, it's been a roller coaster but what the hell would I be doing otherwise? At least it's a cool roller coaster most people never get to ride.
 
If you never had moments of doubt or regret, you'd be weird. Possibly delusional.

If you got to this point in the process, though, it seems pretty unlikely to me that you haven't thought this through enough yet.
 
siliso said:
If you haven’t before, then work in one or all of these places for the summer:
1. A warehouse
2. A mortgage or insurance office
3. A restaurant

Will help keep any potential future regrets in perspective.
Click to expand...
This is great. Working a few back breaking, low pay jobs before med school should be a pre-req. :laugh:
 
Fun1nth3sun1 said:
My husband has an Insurance office. Enough said.
Click to expand...

Can someone explain the misery of working in an insurance office?

I'm sure you get calls from angry policy-holders about denied claims and rising premiums --- but there's also days where you just hang out and talk football scores and what hobbies your kids are getting into? Sure beats running a hot mop on top of a roof somewhere when it's 95F outside !!
 
Med school is not a bed of roses. It is however not a bed of thorns either. You will probably not like every part of med school but you will enjoy a good portion of it. As long as you keep working hard and remember your primary end game of taking care of patients, making a difference, getting to understand the body, and making a nice living on the side, you should be fine.
 
dr.grenouille said:
end up in a speciality that you like. Or it’s like always worth it no matter what? I think I’m just letting my pre-first year nerves get to me!
Click to expand...

Fourth year here. Much of the answer to this question will rely on you and what your goals are. Most of the stuff I've seen happen in med school, I've seen happen before in corporate america. Sprinkle in some entitled, righteous outrage and you have your generic med school. Your best bet is to find balance and, if possible, a support network that doesn't involve medicine. As others have stated and as I've noticed so far, it gets better with each passing year. Also, don't be so quick to judge which specialty you will and wont like until you go through your rotations. You may surprise yourself and others.
 
Hope this helps someone. Burnout happens in medical school. You're not the only one. It's just our society teaches us to shut up, suck in our feelings, and run head first forward and hope we don't crash and burn.

The third week into my third year clerkship (surgery was my first one... i know... yikes), I was burnt out (call me a wimp, say what you will). I wanted to like surgery, I really did. I loved neuro and msk coming into third year, and given how well I did on usmle, honors in my first 2 years, and 15+ publications and conference presentations, I thought i was on my way to ortho or neurosurg. But then surgery hit me. And I realize if this is all medicine is, I can't do it for my whole life. For the first time in my life, I wanted to quit, to give up. Granted, I didn't have any other clerkship at that point to compare surgery to, so surgery WAS medicine to me. Don;t get me wrong, I LOVE medicine now, can't imagine myself doing anything else. But what my third year clerkship made me realize was that yes I love medicine, but ONLY as a career. I don't like it more than my family, my friends, my art, hiking in Utah, or walking on the beach. Talking to patients and seasoned physicians made me realize nobody EVER regret not have worked harder or spent more time in the OR (cliche, i know), but the regrets I hear about are physicians burning out and not spending enough time with family and exploring their hobbies.

At the end of the day, we gotta do what we love. But we also need to keep our priorities straight. Get a realistic picture of what you're getting yourself into. Do I like surgery? Yes, and i've been fortunate enough that residents and attendings told me my spatial skills would make me a great surgeon (yes, I worked that Da Vinci simulation to perfection). But do I want to live the surgery lifestyle? Not really, but I admire and give my utmost respect to those of you who choose to go into surgery. you surgeons / future surgeons are heroes, and I thank you for the sacrifices you make and the services you provide. The bottom line is, I believe I can be a good physician regardless of which specialty I go into. And I think most of us in medical school are that way too. KNOW what your priorities in life are, and pick your specialty accordingly.

I love medicine, all of it. And at this stage of my life I finally found the reason I love medicine, it's not for the fame, the money, or the respect, it's really for the love of treating those who are most vulnerable and in need.
 
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twospadz said:
Yes I regret it. There are so many easier options such as Physician assistant that makes good pay but does not take as long. Also, a lot of people in medicine have tunnel vision. A lot of their lives revolve only around medicine and many are sticklers. Many sit at home, watch only Netflix everyday, talk about Grey's anatomy and think they are getting cool points for reading House of God. Personally I love to travel to different countries, party hard, and meet new people. Many people in medicine are not risk takers in no shape or form (with money, travel, social interactions, nothing). You will see this as you progress. Get a life outside of medicine man and try to not hang around your colleagues as much. You will see your life transform for the better as mine did
Click to expand...

Wow someone who likes traveling and partying, don’t break the mold too much man
 
dr.grenouille said:
Does anyone ever regret going to medical school? Like you think it’s what you really want but you become more stressed out than you expected and lose relationships and don’t even end up in a speciality that you like. Or it’s like always worth it no matter what? I think I’m just letting my pre-first year nerves get to me!
Click to expand...
Complete regret 1st/2nd year. Complete not single regret 3rd/4th. Things will pass. No such thing as the perfect job.
 
In my second year, I can't recommend this career to any "aspiring" students. ****ing hate the preclinical years.
 
Medicine is for workaholics. If you want to be working seventy hour weeks while raising a family it's the right place to be.
 
*raises hand*
I regret going.

I did the medical school to residency to fellowship thing from 2007-2017. 10 years of far more turmoil than I would have ever wanted, and 10 of my prime years that I will never get back. I was never medical-obsessed, and I didn't read about this stuff as a hobby or anything. I still don't. I did this entirely on a whim. Things (and my current life especially) look 180 degrees better now that the miserable period people refer to as "training" is finally behind me. Hard to explain. My favorite memory from those 10 years was packing up a moving truck and my SUV for one last time and driving away from the city where I did fellowship.

Now it's just a career. Doctor is not my identity. It doesn't define me as a person, it's just a job that I do and that's the way I like it. It's busy and at times even frustrating but way better than anything I collectively did the 10 years prior.

Here are the things that helped me the most. I didn't quite have this all figured out, but learned some of these things even towards the end of training:
1.) Get savvy with your musical selections and make yourself new playlists regularly. These are easy ways to vent and even survive the time with the books.
2.) Establish legitimate friendships and hobbies away from work. Not just your college drinking buddy who happens to be working in the same city as you, or your "neighbors" or fellow parishioners. Make non-medical friends and keep them.
3.) Don't just "exercise" or do a stupid Tough Mudder just to finish and "enjoy the experience". Do a sport and compete in it, and constantly set new goals in it. This may play into #2 above. Exercise more than you think you should. Medical peers may even think you're crazy for doing so. That's their problem.
4.) If you're from a non-medical family, accept the fact that they aren't going to understand what you're dealing with. Ever. That gap has widened the further in my training/career I have gone. I learned to stop complaining about it altogether when I'm talking to them.
5.) Oh here's the big one. Medicine is just like every other field, sadly. Lots of dirty tricks and vague answers and blatant lies, and the most over-the-top instance of this came during fellowship. Be warned that when it comes to finally getting a real job after residency or fellowship, your program director and division leadership have absolutely no incentive to talk negatively about ANY of their trainees, including you. The flip side here is that everything you may have done that makes you a star might go right down the drain the second it interferes with the Master Plan for their little pets. A little ironic twist, thanks to my great relationships with everyone else I worked with, landed me a much better job anyways.

Be prepared for anything. This is not your identity but your job. When all of this is finished, just get yourself a good job (preferably away from academia). Period.

Unless you lock yourself in one location for every leg of this, it's going to be tough on the great co-worker friendships you do make. Every few years you say goodbye to people and insist you're going to stay in touch and fly to their new city and hang out. It almost never happens, and when it does it flies by. This has been one of the biggest challenges by far. Everyone (myself included) is too damn busy. Bottom line. #4 above doesn't understand this either.

So why regret? Well, I don't think I needed to semi-freeze my personal life and earnings for nearly a decade to be "successful". I feel I could've done pretty well in a lot of other professions. But now that I'm here, I just keep chugging along. That's all I can do. Good work days still happen, and that's a plus. And my current gig is pretty sweet in a lot of ways.

I regret going to medical school.
As for career choice, I think it ends in a draw. I'm content with my current reality, but I'm not sure it justifies the 10 previous years.
 
You can do much worse. I've seen the grass on the other side and it's much greener over here. Enlisting in the military when you're a little smart (very little) blows. Working, raising kids, and going to school with a bunch of children partying all the time sucks for you. Prison is a terrible place. Grinding in a commissioned private sector gig (anything that pays worth a **** is) = unavoidable long hours, instability, constant backstabbing, and starting over each month. I don't care what the rest of training is like, what the attendings are bitching about, my patient pool, or any other gripe; medicine will always be a lot better than the alternatives. Your tolerance for work determines your salary and there's always someone looking to hire you. This is one of those situations where, you don't know what you don't know and it could be a lot worse.
 
Deferoxamine said:
Be prepared for anything. This is not your identity but your job. When all of this is finished, just get yourself a good job (preferably away from academia). Period.
Click to expand...

Not everyone feels this way, OP. For some of us, it is not just a job but an integral part of our identity (it certainly is for me, and defines almost everything I do). Everyone has their own way of dealing with it. You just have to figure out where on the spectrum you are.


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After serving 5 years in the Army as Military Police, I couldn't imagine hating any job on the civilian side that actually utilized my skills. Be it medicine, engineering, IT, or whatever. I've been out for 6 years now, and NOTHING has sucked since then. I THOUGHT aspects of life were hard before I went in.
 
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Dr. Bruce Banner said:
Hope this helps someone. Burnout happens in medical school. You're not the only one. It's just our society teaches us to shut up, suck in our feelings, and run head first forward and hope we don't crash and burn.

The third week into my third year clerkship (surgery was my first one... i know... yikes), I was burnt out (call me a wimp, say what you will). I wanted to like surgery, I really did. I loved neuro and msk coming into third year, and given how well I did on usmle, honors in my first 2 years, and 15+ publications and conference presentations, I thought i was on my way to ortho or neurosurg. But then surgery hit me. And I realize if this is all medicine is, I can't do it for my whole life. For the first time in my life, I wanted to quit, to give up. Granted, I didn't have any other clerkship at that point to compare surgery to, so surgery WAS medicine to me. Don;t get me wrong, I LOVE medicine now, can't imagine myself doing anything else. But what my third year clerkship made me realize was that yes I love medicine, but ONLY as a career. I don't like it more than my family, my friends, my art, hiking in Utah, or walking on the beach. Talking to patients and seasoned physicians made me realize nobody EVER regret not have worked harder or spent more time in the OR (cliche, i know), but the regrets I hear about are physicians burning out and not spending enough time with family and exploring their hobbies.

At the end of the day, we gotta do what we love. But we also need to keep our priorities straight. Get a realistic picture of what you're getting yourself into. Do I like surgery? Yes, and i've been fortunate enough that residents and attendings told me my spatial skills would make me a great surgeon (yes, I worked that Da Vinci simulation to perfection). But do I want to live the surgery lifestyle? Not really, but I admire and give my utmost respect to those of you who choose to go into surgery. you surgeons / future surgeons are heroes, and I thank you for the sacrifices you make and the services you provide. The bottom line is, I believe I can be a good physician regardless of which specialty I go into. And I think most of us in medical school are that way too. KNOW what your priorities in life are, and pick your specialty accordingly.

I love medicine, all of it. And at this stage of my life I finally found the reason I love medicine, it's not for the fame, the money, or the respect, it's really for the love of treating those who are most vulnerable and in need.
Click to expand...
This is very much my mindset. What field did you end up going into that gave you this kind of freedom?
 
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