Residency or med school. Which was worse?

[jonb12997]

As you look back, what was worse? The long hours of studying and taking lots of tests during med school, or the long hours of being on service and working during residency. I'm wonder what the current feeling is out there on this.... I think med school was more stressful. My wife says residency was way worse to experience (she's not a doctor but lived through both with me)... Thoughts?

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[Doctor Bagel]

As you look back, what was worse? The long hours of studying and taking lots of tests during med school, or the long hours of being on service and working during residency. I'm wonder what the current feeling is out there on this.... I think med school was more stressful. My wife says residency was way worse to experience (she's not a doctor but lived through both with me)... Thoughts?

Both have their ups and downs. I actually kind of liked first and second year of medical school. I had worked beforehand, and it was nice to be a full-time student and focus on learning. I also enjoyed being able to start my day later and structure my own time. 3rd and 4th year were OK, but I think residency was preferable to those because at least you had a role in residency and didn't feel like you were getting in everyone's way. You also have a bit more control over you life as a resident than as a 3rd year medical student. I remember being told on ob/gyn that I couldn't take off for 5 minutes to grab a soda (btw, offering to grab for others, too) just in case something might happen (nothing was scheduled, nothing would happen).

 

[Pinkertinkle]

Medical school was definitely worse, learning random stuff just to forget it later, annoying classmate personalities, stupid administration decisions, being a burden in clinical situations. Residency is much better, you get paid, do work in your field, make a difference in the patients lives... sometimes.

 

[Merely]

^residency is worse? Why?

 

[Law2Doc]

I don't like the phrasing. "Worse" implies both are bad, and neither was. If the question is actually which is "harder", then it's residency, hands down. Longer hours, higher expectations, more intense. But at the end of this you'll back at this as rewarding and valuable training, not something bad.

 

[235009]

Med school was worse because of the constant uncertainty. During the first two years everyone tells you how important Step 1 is so I was constantly concerned whether all the effort in class was going to be for nothing because of a single 8 hour test. Then you hit wards and you're constantly uncertain whether you're doing things right, doing enough, being personable enough, participating appropriately, etc with all the subjectivity associated with the grading. It's exhausting.

With residency you show up, you get the job done, learn along the way, +/- do research and you're all set. No uncertainty. Never once was concerned that I'd get kicked out. While there are still evaluations you aren't constantly concerned about grades.

That said I can understand why a surgery resident may feel that residency is worse/harder.

 

[jonb12997]

I think a lot can depend on the people you work with/for at the different stages...

 

[SouthernSurgeon]

Med school was worse because of the constant uncertainty. During the first two years everyone tells you how important Step 1 is so I was constantly concerned whether all the effort in class was going to be for nothing because of a single 8 hour test. Then you hit wards and you're constantly uncertain whether you're doing things right, doing enough, being personable enough, participating appropriately, etc with all the subjectivity associated with the grading. It's exhausting.

With residency you show up, you get the job done, learn along the way, +/- do research and you're all set. No uncertainty. Never once was concerned that I'd get kicked out. While there are still evaluations you aren't constantly concerned about grades.

That said I can understand why a surgery resident may feel that residency is worse/harder.

As L2D said, "worse" is really a poor word choice. My post NYE brain was not up to a more eloquent explanation at the time of my original response.

I guess I was just never bothered that much by the stress associated with testing and grades. That's kind of old hat after 20 odd years in school and frankly, pales in comparison to the stress I feel now on a frequent basis. I also hate to sound cheesy, but this is also I guess a self v other stress concern. I

Residency has harder hours, more is expected of you during those hours (i.e. higher total quantity of work and higher intensity of work). I try not to look back on med school through rose colored glasses too often...but I really don't think I was spending much of M1-M2 year working 70+ hours a week. Not "real" work. And M3 year I pushed those hours for basically the surgery and internal medicine clerkships, but not anywhere close to that for the rest of the year.

You also, or at least I do, have the stress of still needing to read and learn during this time somehow on top of the workload. This is ongoing too...I'm a senior resident but it's not like I have my whole field down...and every time you move up the ladder there are new depths of knowledge to be had (i.e. moving from basic textbook knowledge of diseases to knowing the current literature on changing therapeutics...or moving from knowing the basic anatomy and steps of an operation to knowing what equipment you want for a case, how you want to adapt it to your independent practice, etc).

Then the big kicker for me - you have the added stress of personal responsibility for someone else's health and well-being, something we particularly acutely feel in my field. It's a unique stress to be spending an entire night at the bedside in the ICU with someone you operated on earlier that day, trying your damnedest to keep them alive and sometimes failing in that effort. That stress hits me much more than any test anxiety or career uncertainty ever has. Not to sound melodramatic, but my job is literally life or death some days. My parents have learned now that when they ask me about work and I say I had a bad day or week, that quite often means someone had either a major complication that I felt like I had a role in, or that someone died.

Last, you get much more experience with the emotionally trying and numbing encounters in residency than you ever did in medical school. Abuse, neglect, violent crimes, sex crimes, you name it. People do horrible things to themselves, to strangers, to family. In med school these are funny stories from your 8 week sojourn through medicine or surgery clerkships. In residency this stuff quickly becomes a very large part of your life. In short, after 5 years of this..."I've seen some sh**".

Now don't get me wrong. I love my job and my field. But the degree of difficulty - in terms of workload, self-discipline needed, emotional stress, really any metric I can think of - compared to medical school? Laughable.

 

[Goro]

Please forgive the interruption, colleague, but "NYE"?
New York encephalitis?

As L2D said, "worse" is really a poor word choice. My post NYE brain was not up to a more eloquent explanation at the time of my original response.

I guess I was just never bothered that much by the stress associated with testing and grades. That's kind of old hat after 20 odd years in school and frankly, pales in comparison to the stress I feel now on a frequent basis. I also hate to sound cheesy, but this is also I guess a self v other stress concern. I

Residency has harder hours, more is expected of you during those hours (i.e. higher total quantity of work and higher intensity of work). I try not to look back on med school through rose colored glasses too often...but I really don't think I was spending much of M1-M2 year working 70+ hours a week. Not "real" work. And M3 year I pushed those hours for basically the surgery and internal medicine clerkships, but not anywhere close to that for the rest of the year.

You also, or at least I do, have the stress of still needing to read and learn during this time somehow on top of the workload. This is ongoing too...I'm a senior resident but it's not like I have my whole field down...and every time you move up the ladder there are new depths of knowledge to be had (i.e. moving from basic textbook knowledge of diseases to knowing the current literature on changing therapeutics...or moving from knowing the basic anatomy and steps of an operation to knowing what equipment you want for a case, how you want to adapt it to your independent practice, etc).

Then the big kicker for me - you have the added stress of personal responsibility for someone else's health and well-being, something we particularly acutely feel in my field. It's a unique stress to be spending an entire night at the bedside in the ICU with someone you operated on earlier that day, trying your damnedest to keep them alive and sometimes failing in that effort. That stress hits me much more than any test anxiety or career uncertainty ever has. Not to sound melodramatic, but my job is literally life or death some days. My parents have learned now that when they ask me about work and I say I had a bad day or week, that quite often means someone had either a major complication that I felt like I had a role in, or that someone died.

Last, you get much more experience with the emotionally trying and numbing encounters in residency than you ever did in medical school. Abuse, neglect, violent crimes, sex crimes, you name it. People do horrible things to themselves, to strangers, to family. In med school these are funny stories from your 8 week sojourn through medicine or surgery clerkships. In residency this stuff quickly becomes a very large part of your life. In short, after 5 years of this..."I've seen some sh**".

Now don't get me wrong. I love my job and my field. But the degree of difficulty - in terms of workload, self-discipline needed, emotional stress, really any metric I can think of - compared to medical school? Laughable.

 

[DrZeke]

As L2D said, "worse" is really a poor word choice. My post NYE brain was not up to a more eloquent explanation at the time of my original response.

I guess I was just never bothered that much by the stress associated with testing and grades. That's kind of old hat after 20 odd years in school and frankly, pales in comparison to the stress I feel now on a frequent basis. I also hate to sound cheesy, but this is also I guess a self v other stress concern. I

Residency has harder hours, more is expected of you during those hours (i.e. higher total quantity of work and higher intensity of work). I try not to look back on med school through rose colored glasses too often...but I really don't think I was spending much of M1-M2 year working 70+ hours a week. Not "real" work. And M3 year I pushed those hours for basically the surgery and internal medicine clerkships, but not anywhere close to that for the rest of the year.

You also, or at least I do, have the stress of still needing to read and learn during this time somehow on top of the workload. This is ongoing too...I'm a senior resident but it's not like I have my whole field down...and every time you move up the ladder there are new depths of knowledge to be had (i.e. moving from basic textbook knowledge of diseases to knowing the current literature on changing therapeutics...or moving from knowing the basic anatomy and steps of an operation to knowing what equipment you want for a case, how you want to adapt it to your independent practice, etc).

Then the big kicker for me - you have the added stress of personal responsibility for someone else's health and well-being, something we particularly acutely feel in my field. It's a unique stress to be spending an entire night at the bedside in the ICU with someone you operated on earlier that day, trying your damnedest to keep them alive and sometimes failing in that effort. That stress hits me much more than any test anxiety or career uncertainty ever has. Not to sound melodramatic, but my job is literally life or death some days. My parents have learned now that when they ask me about work and I say I had a bad day or week, that quite often means someone had either a major complication that I felt like I had a role in, or that someone died.

Last, you get much more experience with the emotionally trying and numbing encounters in residency than you ever did in medical school. Abuse, neglect, violent crimes, sex crimes, you name it. People do horrible things to themselves, to strangers, to family. In med school these are funny stories from your 8 week sojourn through medicine or surgery clerkships. In residency this stuff quickly becomes a very large part of your life. In short, after 5 years of this..."I've seen some sh**".

Now don't get me wrong. I love my job and my field. But the degree of difficulty - in terms of workload, self-discipline needed, emotional stress, really any metric I can think of - compared to medical school? Laughable.

I agree with a lot of why you said here about the responsibility and need to have more in depth understanding as you advance. That is stressful, but my motivation is huge in residency. In med school I constantly felt useless to patient care and had to play mental games with myself to force studying. Now I am dying to know more so I can be a better doctor.

The rest of what you said about life and death and complications... That's more specialty dependent. Those reasons are exactly why I suffered through my MICU and trauma surgery month. Bad outcomes weigh on you no matter what your specialty, especially surgical outcomes. But the whole death thing was hard for me and I knew I didn't want to be dealing with life and death day in and day out.

In terms of support and pressure and responsibility with patient care, this is also program dependent. My program has a lot of autonomy but we have upper levels and faculty that are approachable and always there. For the most part nobody is mad when you ask for help. The culture of your program will play a huge role in the stress of those responsibilities.

So, for me, first and second year med school were easier because responsibilities were minimal and life was simple. However, I didn't enter med school to stay at that stage forever and I don't find myself wishing I could go back there tho I have fond memories. I think residency is more complicated and stakes are higher but life is better because I'm much closer to achieving my goals and I feel I'm making a difference and actually finally practicing medicine (for the most part).

 

[dozitgetchahi]

As L2D said, "worse" is really a poor word choice. My post NYE brain was not up to a more eloquent explanation at the time of my original response.

I guess I was just never bothered that much by the stress associated with testing and grades. That's kind of old hat after 20 odd years in school and frankly, pales in comparison to the stress I feel now on a frequent basis. I also hate to sound cheesy, but this is also I guess a self v other stress concern. I

Residency has harder hours, more is expected of you during those hours (i.e. higher total quantity of work and higher intensity of work). I try not to look back on med school through rose colored glasses too often...but I really don't think I was spending much of M1-M2 year working 70+ hours a week. Not "real" work. And M3 year I pushed those hours for basically the surgery and internal medicine clerkships, but not anywhere close to that for the rest of the year.

You also, or at least I do, have the stress of still needing to read and learn during this time somehow on top of the workload. This is ongoing too...I'm a senior resident but it's not like I have my whole field down...and every time you move up the ladder there are new depths of knowledge to be had (i.e. moving from basic textbook knowledge of diseases to knowing the current literature on changing therapeutics...or moving from knowing the basic anatomy and steps of an operation to knowing what equipment you want for a case, how you want to adapt it to your independent practice, etc).

Then the big kicker for me - you have the added stress of personal responsibility for someone else's health and well-being, something we particularly acutely feel in my field. It's a unique stress to be spending an entire night at the bedside in the ICU with someone you operated on earlier that day, trying your damnedest to keep them alive and sometimes failing in that effort. That stress hits me much more than any test anxiety or career uncertainty ever has. Not to sound melodramatic, but my job is literally life or death some days. My parents have learned now that when they ask me about work and I say I had a bad day or week, that quite often means someone had either a major complication that I felt like I had a role in, or that someone died.

Last, you get much more experience with the emotionally trying and numbing encounters in residency than you ever did in medical school. Abuse, neglect, violent crimes, sex crimes, you name it. People do horrible things to themselves, to strangers, to family. In med school these are funny stories from your 8 week sojourn through medicine or surgery clerkships. In residency this stuff quickly becomes a very large part of your life. In short, after 5 years of this..."I've seen some sh**".

Now don't get me wrong. I love my job and my field. But the degree of difficulty - in terms of workload, self-discipline needed, emotional stress, really any metric I can think of - compared to medical school? Laughable.

+100

I'm in IM, and I can tell you that residency is massively more stressful. If I look back at med school or even college, I do remember a lot of stress associated with grades - 'will I pull it off to get to the next level' etc - but none of this compared to the deeper, more insidious stress you will feel as a resident. You will feel the full brunt of the responsibility for caring for someone's life. Postcall, you will be running through decisions you made over and over again wondering if it all was right etc. You will fully appreciate the sheer volume of stuff you have to learn. As I frequently tell the med students - I generally feel like I'm learning (and/or relearning) about the same amount of book material from med school, just crammed into whatever time remains after you work 80 hrs/week. As stated above, it's one thing to learn basic disease concepts but when you move to fully understanding the depths of current literature, you add a whole new dimension to your required learning. Furthermore, unlike med school there's usually no one 'bible' textbook of your specialty that everyone just memorizes etc - your learning becomes this hit-and-run pastiche of stuff you picked up while googling, random facts gleaned from a journal article or grand rounds session, things an attending taught during a 'chalk talk', street smarts that you pick up on overnight call, facts your senior resident chastised you for when you were an intern, etc. You'll realize how far you've come the first time it dawns on you that you're on a totally different plane vs the medical students and can effortlessly pimp the **** out of them (I don't do this, btw).

(And, to some extent, you SHOULD feel the stress of this responsibility as a resident and you should not be shielded from it by overly involved attendings or senior residents. Otherwise, you're going to be in for a very rude awakening when you head off as a fresh attending.)

You'll feel this stress not only in the ICU but in the clinic. That random pt that came to you on cyclobenzaprine, tramadol, and a bazillion other medications with scripts being filled from 3 different doctors whom your co-resident mindlessly started on an SSRI in clinic today? He's gonna develop serotonin syndrome in a few weeks and seize (this actually happened, btw). You'll do an ICU rotation for a month, get (relatively) good at adjusting vents/pressors/etc, go off and do a bunch of other rotations for 8 months, then come back on an ICU rotation and realize most of those skills have faded and you have to relearn things again. You'll most likely be doing multiple consecutive blocks of call where you'll go without sleep every 3rd-5th night for months on end. Your senses will be dulled, your memory will be diluted, your ability to focus can be compromised and you'll be exhausted. You'll admit people over a 28hr call shift and then have to defend everything you did all night when you are at your absolute nadir in terms of wakefullness. You'll see totally reasonable and acceptable management decisions get trashed by a random attending who only does things some other way and will not admit that there's another legitimate way of managing pts etc (usually happens on the days attendings switch! If I had a nickel for every time one attending thought something done by some previous staff/team was 'inappropriate' or 'malpractice' etc I'd be able to quit and move to Costa Rica).

As a 1st year, you'll be trying to get your footing in everything. As a 2nd year, you'll gain a lot of knowledge and confidence but during 3rd year it'll dawn on you that you are mere months from practicing and you have to make damn sure you're comfortable with doing everything...it's overwhelming at times.

And the 'carnage factor' discussed above certainly exists too. It really sank in at our VA, where the sheer sense of patients' self-neglect seems to be constantly present - when you admit one new terminal lung cancer after another for a month with dudes that smoked 3 packs/day for decades and are still puffing away, things can get a bit...discouraging.

In short, you'll finally be elbow deep in patient care in a way that was impossible as a medical student. I love it, but as you've probably gathered, it has its ups and downs. And it's way harder than medical school. You might not have well-defined 'tests' constantly like you did back then, but your knowledge and skills will be tested more acutely in real-world conditions every single day.

 

[22031 Alum]

Now don't get me wrong. I love my job and my field. But the degree of difficulty - in terms of workload, self-discipline needed, emotional stress, really any metric I can think of - compared to medical school? Laughable.

The only thing I can think of where residency "wins" is the ability to let off steam, bitch & moan, whatever you want to call it, while in the hospital. Overall, I loved med school, but as a student on the wards I felt acutely the need to put on a happy face no matter what was going on, lest I appear to be "unenthusiastic," "not a team player," or something else you don't want to see on your MSPE. As an resident, I was free to make comments like "Ugh, this is bull****" while sitting in the team room doing the not-fun parts of the job, and not be judged for it. That did a lot for my mental health.

 

[Wordead]

The only thing I can think of where residency "wins" is the ability to let off steam, bitch & moan, whatever you want to call it, while in the hospital. Overall, I loved med school, but as a student on the wards I felt acutely the need to put on a happy face no matter what was going on, lest I appear to be "unenthusiastic," "not a team player," or something else you don't want to see on your MSPE. As an resident, I was free to make comments like "Ugh, this is bull****" while sitting in the team room doing the not-fun parts of the job, and not be judged for it. That did a lot for my mental health.

This is the entire reason why I find residency a lot more palatable than medical school (well, M3/M4). I dont feel the need to be enthusiastic about anything I dont care about anymore. Nor do I care about evaluations or what attendings in other departments have to say.

 

[235009]

As L2D said, "worse" is really a poor word choice. My post NYE brain was not up to a more eloquent explanation at the time of my original response.

I guess I was just never bothered that much by the stress associated with testing and grades. That's kind of old hat after 20 odd years in school and frankly, pales in comparison to the stress I feel now on a frequent basis. I also hate to sound cheesy, but this is also I guess a self v other stress concern. I

Residency has harder hours, more is expected of you during those hours (i.e. higher total quantity of work and higher intensity of work). I try not to look back on med school through rose colored glasses too often...but I really don't think I was spending much of M1-M2 year working 70+ hours a week. Not "real" work. And M3 year I pushed those hours for basically the surgery and internal medicine clerkships, but not anywhere close to that for the rest of the year.

You also, or at least I do, have the stress of still needing to read and learn during this time somehow on top of the workload. This is ongoing too...I'm a senior resident but it's not like I have my whole field down...and every time you move up the ladder there are new depths of knowledge to be had (i.e. moving from basic textbook knowledge of diseases to knowing the current literature on changing therapeutics...or moving from knowing the basic anatomy and steps of an operation to knowing what equipment you want for a case, how you want to adapt it to your independent practice, etc).

Then the big kicker for me - you have the added stress of personal responsibility for someone else's health and well-being, something we particularly acutely feel in my field. It's a unique stress to be spending an entire night at the bedside in the ICU with someone you operated on earlier that day, trying your damnedest to keep them alive and sometimes failing in that effort. That stress hits me much more than any test anxiety or career uncertainty ever has. Not to sound melodramatic, but my job is literally life or death some days. My parents have learned now that when they ask me about work and I say I had a bad day or week, that quite often means someone had either a major complication that I felt like I had a role in, or that someone died.

Last, you get much more experience with the emotionally trying and numbing encounters in residency than you ever did in medical school. Abuse, neglect, violent crimes, sex crimes, you name it. People do horrible things to themselves, to strangers, to family. In med school these are funny stories from your 8 week sojourn through medicine or surgery clerkships. In residency this stuff quickly becomes a very large part of your life. In short, after 5 years of this..."I've seen some sh**".

Now don't get me wrong. I love my job and my field. But the degree of difficulty - in terms of workload, self-discipline needed, emotional stress, really any metric I can think of - compared to medical school? Laughable.

This is a really excellent discussion. I've seen plenty of "s**t" too in the last 2.5 years given where I'm doing my residency but at the end of the day I chose my field (IM) because I knew deep down I was able to emotionally deal with that kind of stuff in an adult population. It can certainly be draining and disheartening. However I would absolutely not be able to deal with sick/abused/neglected children. As time goes on I don't find myself second-guessing my decisions as much and I think the slower pace of IM (yes even in the ICU) contributes to that. You have time to think and look things up and be methodical about it. I will tip my hat to you though because even when I do the minor procedures that we do (central lines, para, thora), if it doesn't go perfectly smoothly I'm always wondering whether I messed something up (cannulated an artery, caused a line infection, caused an RP bleed, lacerated an organ!). It's a whole different level of mind-f**k now that I'm a senior and supervising others doing the procedures! I can't even imagine the kind of stress and second guessing a multi-hour surgery would cause! You definitely have bad days both inpatient and outpatient but they're nicely balanced by the good days and you feel like you're actually making a difference, regardless of how small. I chose to do pulm/CC despite all the stressful situations you mentioned because in the ICU you can make the most difference and I find the challenge most fascinating. It's true that it's also the most emotionally taxing but you take the good with the bad.

 

[Raryn]

Given the choice, I'd much rather be a resident than a medical student... and for one simple reason: I have more control over my life as a resident. I work long hours, it's stressful, but I don't have the sheer soul-sucking grind for grades/evals that was medical school. My only exams anymore are extremely low stakes (intraining yearly in pretty much every non-surgical specialty) or strictly pass fail (the boards after I graduate) and I actually enjoy studying for them (because it's relevant material). The end of M2 and certain rotations M3 year were the worst times of my life and I'd rather be back on q2 call in the MICU than have to repeat that.

 

[Hangry]

This is a great thread. A lot of excellent perspectives. I would maybe change the question from "which is worse?" to "do you prefer being a resident to being a medical student?" Obviously residency is far and away more difficult than medical school, in essentially every way- hours, workload, responsibilities, amount needed to learn, etc. However "harder" isn't always a bad thing. My surgery rotation was much harder by most metrics than my pediatrics rotation, but my personal happiness and overall life satisfaction was much better on surgery.

That's just the main question I think about when I read this thread, as a third year student dealing with typical third year BS and looking hopefully forward to residency. Obviously the first 2 years are pretty awesome, and hopefully 4th year is as well, but if residency is no better than third year I will definitely regret my career decision.

 

[Perrotfish]

I disliked each phase of medical training in its own way, and every morning I wake up happy to have it in my rearview mirror. That being said, pound for pound I think that my third year clinical rotations were the most depression inducing, for a few reasons:

1) Not enough hours in the day. Clinicals are a period of time when you're required to work like a resident, but study like a preclinical student for a multiple choice test at the end of every block. I studied in residency, but that was just reading on my patients, and after that whatever scraps of time I had free were truly free and truly mine. In clinicals if you took an hour to sleep it always felt like you were stealing it.

2) The importance of the grades. Residency is basically pass fail. While you want to do your best, when someone bites your head off its nice to know that all you really need is not to get fired. On the other hand a single bad day in clinicals is the difference between an honors and a high pass, which can be the difference between your goal residency and one in flyover country, or even in another medical specialty. Very stressful

3) The randomness of the grades. Having now been on both sides of Medical student education, I am now sure that throwing darts at a wall would be every bit as objective and useful as our current grading system. Maybe if we started letting medical students write the (definitive) notes, place orders, and perform minor surgeries like the Interns the grades would be worth something, but the word 'student' in a litigious society means that medical students will never really have a real job. Which means the grades are always going to be about personality, rather than performance. At least in residency my feedback usually had at least some correlation with how I knew I was actually doing.

4) The utter uselessness of it. Its important to remember that our medical education system wasn't exactly scientifically designed even when they made it up in the late 1800s, and it hasn't adapted to any of the changes in medicine since then. Every 4-8 weeks you start learning a new set of skills and trivia that you couldn't possibly use or even retain. What's it today, the details of how to safely remove an adrenal gland? The management of an ovarian tumor in an 80 year old? Maybe the inpatient treatment of a schizophrenic? What fun and useful knowledge for a future Pediatrician! All, of course, supervised by Residents and Attendings who are more than paying their own salaries through their clinical work and who never see a dime of the 60K you paid the school to study with them: because nothing motivates educators like having no reward for doing well, no consequences for teaching poorly, and no formal education in teaching in the first place.

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

Residency is way more stressful. I have not found medicine very satisfying and am unhappy with my decision to do this life path, but to address your question, the reason residency is way more stressful than medical school is because decisions and assessments you make will actually keep people alive, help them or hurt them, or kill them. This occurs in medicine, surgery, obstetrics, pediatrics, radiology, and many other specialties. It can be a decision as procedural as where to make an incision, how much tissue to excise, or how to direct a catheter or the endotracheal tube, to a decision to anticoagulate or not anticoagulate, which antibiotic to use, whether to get that extra lab test or scan, the quality of your chest compressions, and how you read a bedside ultrasound or a chest X-ray. And you do this all with a growing but very incomplete body of knowledge and skill. You feel the judgment of your peers, your attendings, other specialists, your patients and their families, and most of all your own conscience.

 

[smq123]

Residency is way more stressful. I have not found medicine very satisfying and am unhappy with my decision to do this life path, but to address your question, the reason residency is way more stressful than medical school is because decisions and assessments you make will actually keep people alive, help them or hurt them, or kill them. This occurs in medicine, surgery, obstetrics, pediatrics, radiology, and many other specialties. It can be a decision as procedural as where to make an incision, how much tissue to excise, or how to direct a catheter or the endotracheal tube, to a decision to anticoagulate or not anticoagulate, which antibiotic to use, whether to get that extra lab test or scan, the quality of your chest compressions, and how you read a bedside ultrasound or a chest X-ray. And you do this all with a growing but very incomplete body of knowledge and skill. You feel the judgment of your peers, your attendings, other specialists, your patients and their families, and most of all your own conscience.

Interesting discussion. As everyone has been saying, it's all relative. Yes, the decisions that you make as a resident carry more weight and are far more stress-inducing than the decisions that you made as a medical student, but at least those decisions actually matter, in the grand scheme of things - at least, that's how I felt about it. I hated being a medical student very much, because I hated feeling useless. It is more stressful to make decisions that affect the health of an actual person, but it's better than stressing about a grade or an exam or "does the attending like me as much as student A because that is ultimately how my grade will be decided."

 

[Perrotfish]

Interesting discussion. As everyone has been saying, it's all relative. Yes, the decisions that you make as a resident carry more weight and are far more stress-inducing than the decisions that you made as a medical student, but at least those decisions actually matter, in the grand scheme of things - at least, that's how I felt about it. I hated being a medical student very much, because I hated feeling useless. It is more stressful to make decisions that affect the health of an actual person, but it's better than stressing about a grade or an exam or "does the attending like me as much as student A because that is ultimately how my grade will be decided."

Sometimes I think its hard to look at medical school stress objectively because we feel guilty for having felt stressed at all. We feel safer talking about the stress of working as a resident or an attending because we can phrase it in a way that sounds noble. 'I am worried about the patient'. The stress of medical school, on the other hand, can only be described as selfish. You have to admit that the only things that you're worried about are your career, which sounds greedy, and your dignity, which sounds petty. I have kept in contact with a number of my medical school classmates, and its interesting how many of them who I can remember openly weeping in the hallways during rotations now describe medical school as 'not that bad', and started describing it that way pretty much the day after the match. Meanwhile they seem to have no problem discussing how emotionally traumatic residency was for them, even months after graduating.

 

[WingedOx]

Interesting discussion. As everyone has been saying, it's all relative. Yes, the decisions that you make as a resident carry more weight and are far more stress-inducing than the decisions that you made as a medical student, but at least those decisions actually matter, in the grand scheme of things - at least, that's how I felt about it. I hated being a medical student very much, because I hated feeling useless. It is more stressful to make decisions that affect the health of an actual person, but it's better than stressing about a grade or an exam or "does the attending like me as much as student A because that is ultimately how my grade will be decided."

It's interesting to read this, because I went to the same med school as @smq123 a couple years behind her and I have similar opinions. I had a lot of fun in the first two years of school but M3 and most of M4 years were flat...out...awful. I felt like my job in the hospital was to put on an extemporaneous performance every day rather than learn anything. As a student, you don't actually know enough to be useful but you're judged on how much you exude enthusiasm for whatever reason. You're either doing scut that doesn't have much to do with patient care or you're in the way. The whole thing is belittling. (I should also add that I had a situation I needed resolving during M3 where I requested a meeting with the Dean of Student Affairs... holy crap what an awful experience)

By comparison in residency, despite usually longer hours and greater responsibility, your role is clearly defined, and all that matters is how well you get your job done. Simple as that. A minor catty comment by an attending during a rotation review isn't something you have to worry about explaining away when you go for jobs because of your MSPE.

 

[235009]

It's interesting to read this, because I went to the same med school as @smq123 a couple years behind her and I have similar opinions. I had a lot of fun in the first two years of school but M3 and most of M4 years were flat...out...awful. I felt like my job in the hospital was to put on an extemporaneous performance every day rather than learn anything. As a student, you don't actually know enough to be useful but you're judged on how much you exude enthusiasm for whatever reason. You're either doing scut that doesn't have much to do with patient care or you're in the way. The whole thing is belittling. (I should also add that I had a situation I needed resolving during M3 where I requested a meeting with the Dean of Student Affairs... holy crap what an awful experience)

By comparison in residency, despite usually longer hours and greater responsibility, your role is clearly defined, and all that matters is how well you get your job done. Simple as that. A minor catty comment by an attending during a rotation review isn't something you have to worry about explaining away when you go for jobs because of your MSPE.

On that same note the med student role is even more soul crushing when before med school you had a job where you were respected and which paid well.

 

[WingedOx]

On that same note the med student role is even more soul crushing when before med school you had a job where you were respected and which paid well.

I was a pretty traditional aged applicant, so "paid well" was never something I came from, but I did have to deal with the transition from a heavy liberal arts academic culture where intellectual debate with your superiors was respected and encouraged, to an academic world where hierarchy is sacrosanct. I got myself in some trouble along the way for thinking I could act like I was in the former environment while in med school.

I chalk it up partly to a lack of maturity on my part at the time, but honestly if I had to go back and do med school over again, I'm not sure I'd do much better than I did then. Now that I've actually been a physician for a while, the stupidity of a lot of things involved in the clinical years are even more apparent to me now than they were then, and I'm just not a good ass kisser.

 

[J ROD]

On that same note the med student role is even more soul crushing when before med school you had a job where you were respected and which paid well.

I feel very much the same way. I can't wait to get back to where I have an actual voice. I feel as a med student I am more in the way than anything. I am ready to have my role, let me do what I do, and get the hell out of my way. And help me grow as an attending when I need help.

 

[Mad Jack]

^residency is worse? Why?

Because he's in a surgical residency lol. No way to make that not suck a pile of ****s.

 

[dozitgetchahi]

The utter uselessness of it. Its important to remember that our medical education system wasn't exactly scientifically designed even when they made it up in the late 1800s, and it hasn't adapted to any of the changes in medicine since then. Every 4-8 weeks you start learning a new set of skills and trivia that you couldn't possibly use or even retain. What's it today, the details of how to safely remove an adrenal gland? The management of an ovarian tumor in an 80 year old? Maybe the inpatient treatment of a schizophrenic? What fun and useful knowledge for a future Pediatrician! .

Dear god, yes. I heard a medical student prepping for a 3rd year surgical oral exam with an attending in one of the doctor's lounges the other day. The stuff they were covering was just ridiculous - elaborate details of how to perform specific hemorrhoid procedures, the # of times you can fire a staple gun during colonic surgery without dulling the blade (four...in case you're wondering), ways of modifying your intrabdominal procedures to contain costs, and other obscure trivia that had exactly zero relevance to this MS3 who openly stated she was going to be doing psych.

Looking back on MS3/MS4 (and sometimes even residency), it's shocking as to just how much of what I learned was this sort of trivia. Did you know you can send contaminated Omnipaque contrast for culture, but not most other types of contrast? That bit of knowledge has never again been useful once I rotated off radiology. Do you know how to calculate the curve for urinary excretion of MTX when people are on the HD-MTX protocol for CNS lymphoma? I had to do this daily when I was on our onc wards recently as a senior resident, but I'll never do it again in my life as I'm not doing onc in the future. Etc etc etc.

In general, I always fell like more knowledge is better and you never know when some random bit of trivia might help you, but overall we need to try to keep from going way out in the weeds with MS3s/MS4s etc.

 

[DrZeke]

Dear god, yes. I heard a medical student prepping for a 3rd year surgical oral exam with an attending in one of the doctor's lounges the other day. The stuff they were covering was just ridiculous - elaborate details of how to perform specific hemorrhoid procedures, the # of times you can fire a staple gun during colonic surgery without dulling the blade (four...in case you're wondering), ways of modifying your intrabdominal procedures to contain costs, and other obscure trivia that had exactly zero relevance to this MS3 who openly stated she was going to be doing psych.

Looking back on MS3/MS4 (and sometimes even residency), it's shocking as to just how much of what I learned was this sort of trivia. Did you know you can send contaminated Omnipaque contrast for culture, but not most other types of contrast? That bit of knowledge has never again been useful once I rotated off radiology. Do you know how to calculate the curve for urinary excretion of MTX when people are on the HD-MTX protocol for CNS lymphoma? I had to do this daily when I was on our onc wards recently as a senior resident, but I'll never do it again in my life as I'm not doing onc in the future. Etc etc etc.

In general, I always fell like more knowledge is better and you never know when some random bit of trivia might help you, but overall we need to try to keep from going way out in the weeds with MS3s/MS4s etc.

Either I was asleep for most of med school or my surgery oral exam was super easy. The former is debatable

 

[smq123]

It's interesting to read this, because I went to the same med school as @smq123 a couple years behind her and I have similar opinions.

I figured that you and I had gone to the same med school, based on your screen name.

I actually hated MS1 and MS2 more than MS3, hah. The professors were fine, but I have a hard time with sitting still for that long, and, again, feeling useless. MS3 was better, although still, like you said, you're always in the way. And MS4 was awful for me - I hate interviewing and I hate small talk (so pre-interview dinners were the worst).

Getting paid as a resident was a nice change from constantly having to take out loans, too.

 

[shoal]

Interestingly no one mentioned 1st year of attendinghood. I find it to be the pits. Extremely stressful making decisions on your own with no backup. Its really quite unpleasant, but slowly getting more comfortable. The pay and hours are much much better though. Great discussion thus far.

Sent from my VS986 using Tapatalk

 

[dozitgetchahi]

Interestingly no one mentioned 1st year of attendinghood. I find it to be the pits. Extremely stressful making decisions on your own with no backup. Its really quite unpleasant, but slowly getting more comfortable. The pay and hours are much much better though. Great discussion thus far.

Sent from my VS986 using Tapatalk

I've heard this before - I remember reading some articles where the theme was basically that the transition from resident to attending was the most stressful part of medical training etc. I believe it, too.

Even though I'm doing rheum, I'm going to have to moonlight to make money as a fellow and I'm sort of dreading those shifts already for this reason.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

Interestingly no one mentioned 1st year of attendinghood. I find it to be the pits. Extremely stressful making decisions on your own with no backup. Its really quite unpleasant, but slowly getting more comfortable. The pay and hours are much much better though. Great discussion thus far.

Sent from my VS986 using Tapatalk

I know people who are with you not these feelings, so yeah, totally true for some people. I've got to say, though, being out of training is way better than being in training. I do miss some of the mentorship and ability to talk through difficult cases, but it's also nice to have some freedom to make my own decisions (that are appropriate and safe) rather than dictate to someone else's style. It's also nice to make way more money and to actually have control over my schedule.

 

[QofQuimica]

As you look back, what was worse? The long hours of studying and taking lots of tests during med school, or the long hours of being on service and working during residency. I'm wonder what the current feeling is out there on this.... I think med school was more stressful. My wife says residency was way worse to experience (she's not a doctor but lived through both with me)... Thoughts?

I think people's answers are going to depend on their specific training environments, as well as individual trainee personalities. Personally, I am in the "residency was more stressful" camp, for a lot of the same reasons other people already mentioned. But I also agree with those who noted that residency training was a lot more useful (and made me feel more useful) because I had an actual defined role. I spent a lot of time standing around pretending not to be bored in med school. Can't say I really ever felt that way during residency.

For the person who thought first year as an attending was the most stressful, I would say I liked that year second best, after my MS4 year. I felt useful, got paid a lot of money, suddenly had tons of free time compared to being a resident, didn't have to take monthly tests (just boards once), didn't have people micromanaging me, AND had some clue what I was doing. Win/win all around. But yeah, it was still stressful in its own way for the reasons you mentioned. As is supervising residents and medical students, since you're responsible for their mistakes as well as your own. Heh.

 

[Instatewaiter]

In terms of stress:
Internship > med school > residency


In terms of hours though, residency and internship vastly outnumbered medical school.

 

[Gfliptastic]

Residency is way more stressful. I have not found medicine very satisfying and am unhappy with my decision to do this life path, but to address your question, the reason residency is way more stressful than medical school is because decisions and assessments you make will actually keep people alive, help them or hurt them, or kill them. This occurs in medicine, surgery, obstetrics, pediatrics, radiology, and many other specialties. It can be a decision as procedural as where to make an incision, how much tissue to excise, or how to direct a catheter or the endotracheal tube, to a decision to anticoagulate or not anticoagulate, which antibiotic to use, whether to get that extra lab test or scan, the quality of your chest compressions, and how you read a bedside ultrasound or a chest X-ray. And you do this all with a growing but very incomplete body of knowledge and skill. You feel the judgment of your peers, your attendings, other specialists, your patients and their families, and most of all your own conscience.

I share this sentiment. I think residency is worse, because there are considerable stakes involved. I got my biannual feedback. And one of the remarks was from a fellow. Apparently I forgot to order important medication for a patient in a timely manner cuz I ran off to do something else. So it was put on my eval, because it was potentially dangerous towards patient care. And it really is.

They are two separate entities that aren't quite comparable, but I feel like residency is worse. Missing test questions aren't as really consequential as missing a med or something that leads to an adverse event or even a death.

Additionally, if someone doesn't like you in med school you can avoid them. If someone doesn't like you (fellow, attending, colleague, chief, etc) they are mostly unavoidable. You will have to see them at some point in the future. And you spend your entire day mostly under a microscope w/ some observations entirely subjective.

This is all super stressful and pales in comparison to having to just sit and study in med school. Or be a medical student in the wards. Where you aren't expected to really make potentially lethal decisions.

 

[22031 Alum]

I share this sentiment. I think residency is worse, because there are considerable stakes involved. I got my biannual feedback. And one of the remarks was from a fellow. Apparently I forgot to order important medication for a patient in a timely manner cuz I ran off to do something else. So it was put on my eval, because it was potentially dangerous towards patient care. And it really is.

They are two separate entities that aren't quite comparable, but I feel like residency is worse. Missing test questions aren't as really consequential as missing a med or something that leads to an adverse event or even a death.

Additionally, if someone doesn't like you in med school you can avoid them. If someone doesn't like you (fellow, attending, colleague, chief, etc) they are mostly unavoidable. You will have to see them at some point in the future. And you spend your entire day mostly under a microscope w/ some observations entirely subjective.

This is all super stressful and pales in comparison to having to just sit and study in med school. Or be a medical student in the wards. Where you aren't expected to really make potentially lethal decisions.

I agree that there is a new and different kind of stress once your actions and decisions actually "mean" something. I once had an MFM attending call me at home to tell me how I'd screwed up insulin orders for a patient the night before. Just like your situation, it could have been harmful for the patient. But I felt as though the weight of those decisions is exactly what I signed up for. I wanted that. So while I was bummed out about my mistake, I didn't consider that kind of stuff an additional "stress." The interpersonal stuff- like needing to fake enthusiasm as a student- was much harder for me.

 

[Crayola227]

the gen gist of this thread seems to be it's residency and med school are better and worse in different ways, how that adds up for an individual to make a blanket statement will vary

I found med school very stressful because of the cluelessness
not being important enough to have much help with the cluelessness
feeling like nothing I did mattered for the most part.
Despite it not mattering, I had no issues with enthusiasm of being with my beloved patients
it was just tamped down by just being ignored unless someone wanted to criticize me for said cluelessness that you can only do so much about in a vacuum
boredom from just watching rather than doing

Intern year:
still clueless, but workload has tripled in # of patients and quadrupled in terms of all the stuff you have to do (notes, orders, pages, beauracracy)

terror of hurting people, the uselessness of being a med student was offset by the fact you couldn't really hurt anyone
this is offset as alum said by the fact that what you do actually matters now, with the power to harm also comes the power to heal

I had no idea how really start being a doctor until I had the responsibility of one
the feeling of "being the doctor" eg what YOU do helps people, feels pretty damn good
like she said it's what you signed up for with 7 or more years of ed
the learning curve is steep which is stressful but also satisfying to make so much headway
I felt I learned more in 4 mos of internship than 2 years of med clinical rotations

as far as being clueless and ignored, I still felt more ignored than I would have liked, however, since you are responsible to do stuff and the stuff you don't know how to do and don't get done becomes the responsibility of someone above you, therefore in order to make their job easier they are often FORCED to slow down and teach you how to do your job better
you are now entitled to bother someone on the computer and get your answers questioned if it gets stuff done safely and efficiently
the senior will explain the plan because you have to carry it out in orders and documentation
that will help you not sound like an idiot making rounds less painful for the attending and seniors listen to and less scary for you cuz in the loop

you still get criticized constantly and feel like you don't make anyone happy ever
(except sometimes patients, they have different standards for judging you, and sometimes easier to please, Rx'ing a heating pad makes them soooooo happy sometimes and this power feels good)

despite the imposter syndrome and feeling like the hugest pain in the ass
the opposite of invisible constantly under the microscope, you don't get cut of the loop
you do stuff right sometimes, so despite what you might feel from colleagues you still get a sense of mattering and accomplishment for all of the above

the assumption usually when you're on the computer or reading on smartphone is typically that you are working, because you have such a crushing workload it's hard to imagine you're not, and if you're not you'll pay for it,
so more autonomy in some sense
you have more say in deciding pee and food breaks
physical toll tho is more
eat less maybe but notice hunger less for being busy
feel more stress pressure not to use the bathroom or eat (from workload not because you'll lose the team or they wonder where you went off to slack)

the hours are more brutal for work and sleep
but the time goes by faster since you're doing not just watching others do wondering what's going on

paychecks!
pride outside work with community/friends/family cuz you make a difference and a doctor!
don't have much time to deal with people outside work simplifying life
but that's lonely too

 

[Crayola227]

my fellow interns and I felt soul crushed, just soul crushed

our consensus after chatting 3 months in:
we had never felt worse self esteem about ourselves ever in our lives
more incompetent
more stupid
more annoying
more wrong never get anything right
no recognition feel goods from uppers
dismissed tho even when we were right
still felt more kid than adult at work as far as colleague treatment
and majority of us admitted to almost daily sobbing, even the guys (not that guys don't cry but the tough private seemingly face-mask military dudes that seemed performing well admitted this freely)
which isn't to say people weren't also having a good time and glad to be there

I've never been more unhappy in my entire life,
even after sexual assault or loved ones dying or homelessness
I thought about "escape" on a daily basis
Oddly I still also looked forward to work, to looking at results in the EMR, talking to patients, their progress, learning, putting in orders, and spending time when things wound down doing my job after rounds, talking to my colleagues in the team room
lunch at conference

EDIT: I realized I just compared intern year to rape. ah geez. I'm sorry to anyone that this offends or feels differently. I don't mean it glibly or to minimize anyone else's experience.

 

[22031 Alum]

you still get criticized constantly and feel like you don't make anyone happy ever

This made me sad for you. Even as an intern my residency was nothing like that.

 

[Kissmyabjj]

+100

I'm in IM, and I can tell you that residency is massively more stressful. If I look back at med school or even college, I do remember a lot of stress associated with grades - 'will I pull it off to get to the next level' etc - but none of this compared to the deeper, more insidious stress you will feel as a resident. You will feel the full brunt of the responsibility for caring for someone's life. Postcall, you will be running through decisions you made over and over again wondering if it all was right etc. You will fully appreciate the sheer volume of stuff you have to learn. As I frequently tell the med students - I generally feel like I'm learning (and/or relearning) about the same amount of book material from med school, just crammed into whatever time remains after you work 80 hrs/week. As stated above, it's one thing to learn basic disease concepts but when you move to fully understanding the depths of current literature, you add a whole new dimension to your required learning. Furthermore, unlike med school there's usually no one 'bible' textbook of your specialty that everyone just memorizes etc - your learning becomes this hit-and-run pastiche of stuff you picked up while googling, random facts gleaned from a journal article or grand rounds session, things an attending taught during a 'chalk talk', street smarts that you pick up on overnight call, facts your senior resident chastised you for when you were an intern, etc. You'll realize how far you've come the first time it dawns on you that you're on a totally different plane vs the medical students and can effortlessly pimp the **** out of them (I don't do this, btw).

(And, to some extent, you SHOULD feel the stress of this responsibility as a resident and you should not be shielded from it by overly involved attendings or senior residents. Otherwise, you're going to be in for a very rude awakening when you head off as a fresh attending.)

You'll feel this stress not only in the ICU but in the clinic. That random pt that came to you on cyclobenzaprine, tramadol, and a bazillion other medications with scripts being filled from 3 different doctors whom your co-resident mindlessly started on an SSRI in clinic today? He's gonna develop serotonin syndrome in a few weeks and seize (this actually happened, btw). You'll do an ICU rotation for a month, get (relatively) good at adjusting vents/pressors/etc, go off and do a bunch of other rotations for 8 months, then come back on an ICU rotation and realize most of those skills have faded and you have to relearn things again. You'll most likely be doing multiple consecutive blocks of call where you'll go without sleep every 3rd-5th night for months on end. Your senses will be dulled, your memory will be diluted, your ability to focus can be compromised and you'll be exhausted. You'll admit people over a 28hr call shift and then have to defend everything you did all night when you are at your absolute nadir in terms of wakefullness. You'll see totally reasonable and acceptable management decisions get trashed by a random attending who only does things some other way and will not admit that there's another legitimate way of managing pts etc (usually happens on the days attendings switch! If I had a nickel for every time one attending thought something done by some previous staff/team was 'inappropriate' or 'malpractice' etc I'd be able to quit and move to Costa Rica).

As a 1st year, you'll be trying to get your footing in everything. As a 2nd year, you'll gain a lot of knowledge and confidence but during 3rd year it'll dawn on you that you are mere months from practicing and you have to make damn sure you're comfortable with doing everything...it's overwhelming at times.

And the 'carnage factor' discussed above certainly exists too. It really sank in at our VA, where the sheer sense of patients' self-neglect seems to be constantly present - when you admit one new terminal lung cancer after another for a month with dudes that smoked 3 packs/day for decades and are still puffing away, things can get a bit...discouraging.

In short, you'll finally be elbow deep in patient care in a way that was impossible as a medical student. I love it, but as you've probably gathered, it has its ups and downs. And it's way harder than medical school. You might not have well-defined 'tests' constantly like you did back then, but your knowledge and skills will be tested more acutely in real-world conditions every single day.

I was a wreck on my postcall days during internship. I would wake up randomly during the day freaking out about something and text whoever the tern was the took over my patients.

 

[TypeADissection]

Hands down. Residency is worse (and I actually really enjoy being a surgical resident). It's not even close. In med school, you have all the time in the world to study. I still played intramural sports, went to trivia twice a week, etc. It's just hard to explain the unique pain of residency: the incessant floor pages, trying to study for in-service exams while exhausted, attempting to have some sort of life outside the hospital, etc. I would do med school again. It's a lot like high school/college in a weird way. Once I'm down with residency (and fellowship), there's no chance I'd ever go back to do this. Nope. Big helping of nope with some nope sauce on the side and wash it down with a tall glass of diet nope.

 

[dozitgetchahi]

Hands down. Residency is worse (and I actually really enjoy being a surgical resident). It's not even close. In med school, you have all the time in the world to study. I still played intramural sports, went to trivia twice a week, etc. It's just hard to explain the unique pain of residency: the incessant floor pages, trying to study for in-service exams while exhausted, attempting to have some sort of life outside the hospital, etc. I would do med school again. It's a lot like high school/college in a weird way. Once I'm down with residency (and fellowship), there's no chance I'd ever go back to do this. Nope. Big helping of nope with some nope sauce on the side and wash it down with a tall glass of diet nope.

Agreed - there is a huge difference in time commitment.

An even bigger problem is managing the rest of your life. If your car broke down as a med student, for instance, you could get it fixed and it often meant just a bit less time spent studying that day etc. Seemed like a big deal at the time, but it wasn't.

As a resident, these types of issues are a lot tougher to deal with. Car broke down? You might be driving a rental for a bit, bumming rides off other residents, or taking a taxi until the next postcall day or whenever the problem can be taken care of. Health problems? Good luck - maybe you'll have a good PD who is accommodating (ours has been very good to some residents in this situation), but often you're going to be struggling to fit in your doctors' appts etc. I always had a huge pile of 'general life issues/tasks' pile up during my months on wards, and much of my time on 'easy' rotations was spent catching up on this stuff.

 

[RadOncDoc21]

Residency- full time job + responsibilities and still need to study like a med student would. Med school was flexible and probably the most fun I ever had in my life. Other than OB/Gyn residents, nobody else seemed to care what I was doing during my clinical rotations and the 1st two years I never even went to class!

 

[BigRedBeta]

I was a way better resident than medical student, so med school was way worse.

 

[so721]

Residency was way worse because more is expected of you and you have less structure. You're literally on your own to study devise your schedule etc. Medical school you had more supervision and guidance.

 

[dozitgetchahi]

Residency was way worse because more is expected of you and you have less structure. You're literally on your own to study devise your schedule etc. Medical school you had more supervision and guidance.

Agreed...agreed. I think a lot of people head into residency thinking that the training will basically 'mold' them into the doctor they want to be...they just need to go along for the ride. Wrong! While it's true that you pick up a bit (maybe even a lot) from osmosis, you also need to read and study HARD and a lot of people have a rude awakening when they realize this.

It's easy to fall into the trap of never reading - I see a lot of people doing it. You'll become a terrible clinician this way.

 

[Bacchus]

It's hard to compare medical school to residency. Medical school was such a slap in the face to me. I never had to work so hard in my life with often piss-poor results. Looking back, I'm pretty sure I was clinically depressed or at least dysthymic through my entire 1st, 2nd and 3rd years. 4th year was so much better when I was choosing electives I wanted to do. I felt infinitely better after COMLEX II/PE was out of the way. Residency has had its ups and downs, especially with the upheaval we've had recently but it has been so much better than medical school. That said, it's also very tough. My light at the end of the tunnel is knowing where I'll be at the end of this year (Since September).

 

[ScubaV]

Med school (specifically M3/M4) was way, way worse. I liked M1/M2 because I liked the classroom environment and self-managing my time for most of the day. I hated M3/M4 because not only did you have to fake enthusiasm and contribute almost nothing of value, I was ambivalent at best or actively disliked at worst, most of my rotations. It's no surprise that I considered radiology and pathology and ended up choosing the latter. I remember towards the end of M4 I told one of the residents I was rotating with that I couldn't wait for med school to be over so I could start residency and do things I was interested in. He seemed shocked, although maybe that was more at my bluntness than anything. The part about clinicals I did like was talking to patients and hearing their story. It's just everything else I hated: rounding, being pimped, writing progress notes, etc.

There's some crappy parts about residency too, although for pathology it's more that 90% of people do a combined AP/CP residency out of job necessity, but only like either AP or CP (or forensics although that technically falls under AP). I just want to look at slides and make diagnoses. Lab stuff...bleh.

 

[j4pac]

Call me crazy...but I liked medical school. I worked nights throughout undergrad...and honestly, I thought that my life was easier in medical school. Internship's hours were long, but I have a night float system, which was very doable. I had a q3d ICU month which was pure survival...but outside of that month, it was doable. I thought that internship was challenging but it was supportive and I got to work with great people. I enjoyed it. I will be doing my residency in PM&R this coming up summer...I suspect that I will enjoy it there too.

I've been the primary caretaker of twins the past four years and I can say with complete certainty that it has been more challenging than anything that I have had to face in medicine. You think q3d is bad? Try q3hr for the first life of my twins lives waking up in the middle of the night feeding and taking care of them...only to go off to work the next morning. I can't remember the last time I sleep past 7AM. I was able to sleep in in medical school and internship...that doesn't happen with young children. Medical schooling is challenging...but there are things more difficult in life. I've been much more sleep deprived as a parent than a physician.

 

[Kissmyabjj]

Call me crazy...but I liked medical school. I worked nights throughout undergrad...and honestly, I thought that my life was easier in medical school. Internship's hours were long, but I have a night float system, which was very doable. I had a q3d ICU month which was pure survival...but outside of that month, it was doable. I thought that internship was challenging but it was supportive and I got to work with great people. I enjoyed it. I will be doing my residency in PM&R this coming up summer...I suspect that I will enjoy it there too.

I've been the primary caretaker of twins the past four years and I can say with complete certainty that it has been more challenging than anything that I have had to face in medicine. You think q3d is bad? Try q3hr for the first life of my twins lives waking up in the middle of the night feeding and taking care of them...only to go off to work the next morning. I can't remember the last time I sleep past 7AM. I was able to sleep in in medical school and internship...that doesn't happen with young children. Medical schooling is challenging...but there are things more difficult in life. I've been much more sleep deprived as a parent than a physician.

Dude, I loved MS1 and MS2. It was two years of my life purely dedicated to learning with no real responsibilities. I see people with small children and I am amazed that they are able to even function outside of the constant attention kids require. My wife and I have already agreed that we are not having kids until I finish residency.

 

[j4pac]

Dude, I loved MS1 and MS2. It was two years of my life purely dedicated to learning with no real responsibilities. I see people with small children and I am amazed that they are able to even function outside of the constant attention kids require. My wife and I have already agreed that we are not having kids until I finish residency.

You're going into PM&R...you'll be fine either way. In many ways residency can be easier than being an attending. I would probably avoid having kids PGY-1/2 but I think that PGY-3/4 is completely reasonably assuming that your SO understands that call is call, and you have childcare coverage worked out.

I wouldnt trade my experiences with my girls for anything in the world. I've had a singleton recently, and it's been much easier...