Returning doubts about medicine

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I always wanted to become a veterinarian, and up until around my sophomore year of college, I was stuck between humans and animals. I decided to pursue human medicine, but I've recently been starting to have some doubts. I keep thinking about my dog back home; she's getting old, and I just keep imagining her in pain, and I feel sad about it. It makes me want to forget about humans and just help animals.
However, I have some personal reasons for why I'd rather go into human medicine.

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Shadow both and give yourself time to figure it out! You don't have to go into med right after college. Do some soul-searching, and if you arrive back at human medicine, then you know it's a calling.

By the way, I'm pretty sure being a vet requires a larger desire to help humans rather than their pets as well. Plus, ask yourself if you can put a bunch of animals down...which is what you'll be doing as a vet as well. Personally, I don't think I could do that because I love my own dogs too much and don't think I could do that to another animal. Plus the baggage of watching the owners be heartbroken from a combination of their decisions and your actions.

But then again...ask me about physician-assisted suicide and the issue for me becomes much more complex. Perhaps that lies in the fact that in physician-assisted suicide, it's the patient who decides. In an animal/pet, they can't really ever give consent!
 
Is your desire to help animals something that you could see yourself satisfying through hobbies instead of as a career? Could you practice human medicine, and get your fill of working with animals by volunteering at an animal shelter or something like that?
 
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Is your desire to help animals something that you could see yourself satisfying through hobbies instead of as a career? Could you practice human medicine, and get your fill of working with animals by volunteering at an animal shelter or something like that?

I almost feel like volunteering in an animal shelter wouldn't be adequate enough; like I would need to make a bigger difference through veterinary care.
 
Would there be any situation where it would be realistic to have both degrees?
 
I definitely can't imagine it ever being realistic to have both degrees. I've heard that getting into vet school requires extensive work experience with animals, so it seems unlikely that you would be able to swing both. I work at a vet hospital myself and no matter how much you love animals, they get exhausting to deal with pretty quick. Obviously there's the constant poop and pee everywhere, hair that gets all over everything, and never ever being clean. But then there's also things like crazy vicious pets and also crazy vicious owners! Definitely a try it before you buy it situation.
 
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Would there be any situation where it would be realistic to have both degrees?

General surgery or anesthesiology. You can treat people like animals once they are anesthetized.
 
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Would there be any situation where it would be realistic to have both degrees?
Yes, in a world where you are made of money and don't have to barrow astronomical amounts of money to pay for both medical school and veterinary school.
 
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I always wanted to become a veterinarian, and up until around my sophomore year of college, I was stuck between humans and animals. I decided to pursue human medicine, but I've recently been starting to have some doubts. I keep thinking about my dog back home; she's getting old, and I just keep imagining her in pain, and I feel sad about it. It makes me want to forget about humans and just help animals.
However, I have some personal reasons for why I'd rather go into human medicine.
My advice is to stick with human medicine unless you really, really, really cannot imagine not being a vet. Speaking as the daughter of a well-known and well-respected vet who has been in practice for 40+ years, the career just seems to have far more problems than human medicine in general. School tuition/debt is roughly the same (maybe slightly less), but there are far fewer vet schools than med schools (28 in the US), you make far less money once you're out, you have far more competition for training spots, and job security is far less certain. Plus, you have to remember that even though you are helping animals as a vet, you end up spending most of your time around very sick animals, many of which will likely die. This can be pretty depressing if you're like me and thought that the saddest scene of I Am Legend was when the dog dies. Animals can't express what is bothering them so it can be incredibly challenging to figure out what is wrong and how to help.

Additionally, based off of what my mom has told me, the financial side of medicine is far more present in veterinary medicine than it is in human medicine. Most people don't have insurance on their pets, or if they do it is not for that much and is not as highly regulated as human medical insurance. This means that you will often have to pose the question to your clients, "How much money is your pet's life and/or comfort worth to you?" Oftentimes, people cannot afford to drop 10k to save the life of their pet. This means that you will have to put the animal down because its owner could not afford to save it. It also means that when new and exciting technology and/or treatment gets developed, you still may not be able to use it because of the cost to the owner. Depressing, man. This situation simply does not exist for human medicine in the United States, where "how much" is rarely a factor in saving a person's life.

Finally, pet owners can be crazy. There is something about pet owners that in my opinion makes them far worse to deal with than it would be to deal with the family of an ill person, or even the ill person his or herself. I can't tell you the number of times my mom's clients have been complete ***holes to her, usually in situations where my mom could not do anything to save the animal and in turn she was blamed. And oh yeah, the legal liability issues are just as big if not bigger than they are in human medicine.

Tl;dr: Veterinary medicine and human medicine both have their fair share of 'problems.' But in my opinion, unless you literally cannot imagine a life as anything other than a vet, go for human medicine, adopt lots of pets, and buy them health insurance.
 
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My advice is to stick with human medicine unless you really, really, really cannot imagine not being a vet. Speaking as the daughter of a well-known and well-respected vet who has been in practice for 40+ years, the career just seems to have far more problems than human medicine in general. School tuition/debt is roughly the same (maybe slightly less), but there are far fewer vet schools than med schools (28 in the US), you make far less money once you're out, you have far more competition for training spots, and job security is far less certain. Plus, you have to remember that even though you are helping animals as a vet, you end up spending most of your time around very sick animals, many of which will likely die. This can be pretty depressing if you're like me and thought that the saddest scene of I Am Legend was when the dog dies. Animals can't express what is bothering them so it can be incredibly challenging to figure out what is wrong and how to help.

Additionally, based off of what my mom has told me, the financial side of medicine is far more present in veterinary medicine than it is in human medicine. Most people don't have insurance on their pets, or if they do it is not for that much and is not as highly regulated as human medical insurance. This means that you will often have to pose the question to your clients, "How much money is your pet's life and/or comfort worth to you?" Oftentimes, people cannot afford to drop 10k to save the life of their pet. This means that you will have to put the animal down because its owner could not afford to save it. It also means that when new and exciting technology and/or treatment gets developed, you still may not be able to use it because of the cost to the owner. Depressing, man. This situation simply does not exist for human medicine in the United States, where "how much" is rarely a factor in saving a person's life.

Finally, pet owners can be crazy. There is something about pet owners that in my opinion makes them far worse to deal with than it would be to deal with the family of an ill person, or even the ill person his or herself. I can't tell you the number of times my mom's clients have been complete ***holes to her, usually in situations where my mom could not do anything to save the animal and in turn she was blamed. And oh yeah, the legal liability issues are just as big if not bigger than they are in human medicine.

Tl;dr: Veterinary medicine and human medicine both have their fair share of 'problems.' But in my opinion, unless you literally cannot imagine a life as anything other than a vet, go for human medicine, adopt lots of pets, and buy them health insurance.

This probably makes me a horrible person, but I think my limit/budget on how far I'm willing to go to save my two dogs's lives is about 800-1k each...

If, in any situation, the cost will be more than that, either I'll have to give them up to someone willing to spend more than that, or have them euthanized. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one with that mindset.
 
This probably makes me a horrible person, but I think my limit/budget on how far I'm willing to go to save my two dogs's lives is about 800-1k each...

If, in any situation, the cost will be more than that, either I'll have to give them up to someone willing to spend more than that, or have them euthanized. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one with that mindset.
Right, so imagine being a vet -- whose calling in life is to save animals -- and having to euthanize an animal because the owner didn't want to cough up the money.

It's not easy.
 
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I'd say choose wisely. You are in for a long road (esp MD), don't want to come out regretting.

Some days, I ask myself why I am not in Vet school instead. Then I remembered,... My cat is an exception - she never bites or scratches (even if you bite her... uh... :D)
 
Do you want to be poor all your life?
Just adopt many pets if your heart so desires.
 
Do you want to be poor all your life?
Just adopt many pets if your heart so desires.
Lol you're not going to be poor as a vet. But you will definitely be poorER than if you were a doctor.
 
Lol you're not going to be poor as a vet. But you will definitely be poorER than if you were a doctor.

Not sure how it all works but I have paid a lot more every time I go to the vet for some pretty basic stuff vs every time I went to the doc sans insurance...
 
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