Thoughts on "Only become a doctor if you can't imagine doing anything else"?

[jmreilly97]

Hi everyone,

After a recent conversation with my former pediatrician, I told her I was pre-med. Her response was to "only become a doctor if you can't imagine yourself doing anything else", and she also said that if I was interested in science engineering or scientific research would be a much easier way to go. It's not that I can't imagine myself in any other career, but I don't believe other careers would necessarily be as fulfilling as becoming a doctor. I'm also particularly drawn to my classes that emphasize things like anatomy and medical applications of what I'm learning as I find it more interesting than pure science.
I was wondering what people's thoughts were on this statement and how to decide if medicine is right for you. Thank you!

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[ScottTenorman54]

Bull. In the same vein as the whole "medicine is a sacred, noble calling" thing that certain people in premed and med go around proselytizing. It can be just a job, or it can be your whole life. Personally, I can see plenty of other things I could pursue. Med's the most satisfying one though. Make sure it is for you too, I think what most people really mean when they say that is "only do it if you can't imagine being more satisfied doing anything else". Shadow a ton, talk to docs.

 

[Shirafune]

Do some clinical volunteering, shadowing and talk to physicians. Think about what you want out of your career: health equity research, education, administrative duties, etc. Whatever they are, you should convince yourself that getting a MD is the best way of accomplishing your career goals.

 

[Turkishking]

Start shadowing and volunteering to get an idea.

 

[Dandine]

@jmreilly97

Not sure what year you are, but here are just some things that come to mind:

-Probably the two biggest factors involved with the med process is time (8+ years of training) and money (depends on location and cost of school; also apps and tests are expensive). Whether the benefits of medical training outweigh the costs is something each person has to determine for themselves. I wouldn't mind calling it a "calling," but there may be other factors driving people to pursue medicine. Whatever the reason, it has to resonate with you and get you through training. You will be spending time and money for a long time.
(Tl;dr...you probably *would* need a strong reason to pursue medicine given that it is not an easy field to pursue!)

-There are other things which would make medicine as a career difficult. Definitely shadow/volunteer/work in a healthcare setting to see to see the current atmosphere of clinic (most likely you will be training under a similar atmosphere; it's a huge essential when applying to medical school).

Hope that answered your question; it's hard to answer, but at some point once you've truly evaluated why you want to go into medicine, then you'll know, and you'll want to do it even when it gets hard (if you've already figured it out, great! Keep on going). It's a learning process. For now get through pre-med stuff and get involved in things you're interested in--if nothing else those things will shape what you may end up doing later.

Best of luck to you!

 

[OchemOficionado]

I've been told the same, and I agree. This journey isn't easy, in fact, it'll only get harder. I think that statement is made to urge you to consider if you're going to medicine for the right reasons and are aware of the possible sacrifices. The people I've heard say it have completed medical school so that says something.

 

[Dagrimsta1]

Work in medical field. You need to see it first.
FYI, I don't think I've ever met a physician that ever told me to become one. Take what they say with a grain of salt.
Plus, doctor isn't the only profession in the medical field...

 

[AttemptingScholar]

If someone told me they couldn't see themselves pursuing anything other than medicine, I would interpret that as they haven't explored other careers and don't have any imagination. I'm not an ADCOM, but I wouldn't trust someone who said that to actually know they want to be a doctor. For me, a lot of the point of the premed path is trying out other stuff and making sure you wouldn't rather do that (research/other medical positions/humanities/etc)

 

[LizzyM]

Hmmm... I heard that 30+ years ago and I could think of other things I'd be happy doing and I'm doing 'em. I'm also on the faculty of a medical school although I'm not a physician.

If you can shadow as a "day in the life" from the start of the work day until the end, that is really useful. Get an idea for the length of the day, the amount of time spent with patients and the amount spent doing paperwork and documentation. Ask about CME and studying for re-certification exams. Find out about call schedules and the number of weekends worked per month or per year. Ask, "what most annoys you about the job?" and "what has changed over the years that makes this less satisfying?"

Ages ago I was a babysitter for a surgical subspecialist's kids. He'd see me out when he and his wife came home from an event and then head across the street to the hospital (at 11 pm or midnight) to check on his post-op patients and the residents caring for them! That kind of life is not for everyone.

 

[fhockey13]

I'm almost done residency and yes I still love it/couldn't see myself doing anything else/would do it all over again if I had to/other stereotypical versions of that etc. but I've never worked on wall street or in in congress (and neither have most of the people who use this quote) so who knows if I would find it equally as interesting/enjoyable. Many fields require their own set of sacrifices, student loan debt, difficult lifestyles (finance, politics, law etc.) and I wonder if they use the same line. Honestly though whenever I hear this quote/melodramatic advice my soul rolls its eyes

Throughout residency I've watched a lot of MSNBC locked up (because the tv in the call room has like 4 channels and they're all infomercials after 2 am). Interestingly, on one of the episodes about prison gangs one of the gang leaders used a variation of this quote to a new prisoner that had never been in any sort of gang and wanted to join.

 

[Pasmal]

My opinion is that overall physicians are shifting away from the "medicine is your life" philosophy. Most younger docs and med students I've talked to tend to be open to the idea that you can leverage your degree however you wish. When I say "I want to practice for a while but eventually I want to explore other interests, possibly full-time" the looks of bewilderment I get are usually from older physicians and/or sub-specialists who can't imagine doing anything other than xyz. I don't disagree that it will be my life for residency and as a young attending, but I think it is narrow-minded to assume that once you become a doctor you can never escape the clinic/OR and do other things, related (health policy, healthcare admin, education, research) or not (law, finance, real estate, politics).

 

[cactusman]

I think this piece of advice is much more applicable to studio and performing arts. In my opinion it's a bad idea to tell people that if they want to go into medicine, they should not be happy with any other field; it sets them up to build the career up in their mind and feel devastated if they can't make it into med school.

 

[blackbirdfly21]

I might be the odd person out here and say that I somewhat agree with what your pediatrician said. It's a tough, but rewarding and fulfilling career trajectory. If you could see yourself doing something else, medicine doesn't have to be completely out the window, but I would think long and hard before ultimately deciding to go pursue it.

 

[OchemOficionado]

If someone told me they couldn't see themselves pursuing anything other than medicine, I would interpret that as they haven't explored other careers and don't have any imagination. I'm not an ADCOM, but I wouldn't trust someone who said that to actually know they want to be a doctor. For me, a lot of the point of the premed path is trying out other stuff and making sure you wouldn't rather do that (research/other medical positions/humanities/etc)

If anything, your comment reads as if you're the one with a lack of imagination. You have to remember that not every premed decided they wanted to be a doctor when they were 8. We didn't all go straight from High School to a university and then Med school. There are plenty of us who are non traditional and have had other careers before deciding we want nothing more than to pursue our medical aspirations. It doesn't have to be a negative thing because you don't understand it.

 

[TehTeddy]

It seems like this advice is given in every difficult field. When I was in physics exploring PhD options, I heard the same advice online: "only pursue grad school in physics if you can't imagine doing anything else." I'm in philosophy now, and sure enough, a professor advised students to only pursue philosophy post-grad if they can't imagine doing anything else (although I wasn't considering it). It looses its sting once you realize the plethora of fields saying the same thing.

 

[EM2Be2017]

Bull. In the same vein as the whole "medicine is a sacred, noble calling" thing that certain people in premed and med go around proselytizing. It can be just a job, or it can be your whole life.

The short and sweet answer is that it's definitely not bullsh*t. I was told this before going to med school and now I tell it to others interested in med school. You need to be very good at practicing delayed gratification. You will have to make many sacrifices, but the good news is that life doesn't stop when you are in med school. You still have time to be a person and do the things you enjoy, but you will have to choose where you invest your time because you only have so much of it.

The bottom line is that you have to be passionate about medicine. You simply won't be happy if you are doing it for the wrong reasons. Talk with as many different physicians in different fields as you can about what they like and dislike about their career and see if it's right for you.

 

[mwsapphire]

I think this piece of advice is much more applicable to studio and performing arts. In my opinion it's a bad idea to tell people that if they want to go into medicine, they should not be happy with any other field; it sets them up to build the career up in their mind and feel devastated if they can't make it into med school.

The sad thing is, this is exactly what it's like for me.
And that scares me D:

 

[MD_Odyssey]

Work in medical field. You need to see it first.
FYI, I don't think I've ever met a physician that ever told me to become one. Take what they say with a grain of salt.
Plus, doctor isn't the only profession in the medical field...

Do you have plans to become a physician?
After hearing that what makes you still want to pursue medicine?

 

[ScottTenorman54]

The short and sweet answer is that it's definitely not bullsh*t. I was told this before going to med school and now I tell it to others interested in med school. You need to be very good at practicing delayed gratification. You will have to make many sacrifices, but the good news is that life doesn't stop when you are in med school. You still have time to be a person and do the things you enjoy, but you will have to choose where you invest your time because you only have so much of it.

The bottom line is that you have to be passionate about medicine. You simply won't be happy if you are doing it for the wrong reasons. Talk with as many different physicians in different fields as you can about what they like and dislike about their career and see if it's right for you.

But that's not nearly the same thing as "only become a doctor if you can't imagine yourself doing anything else". It'd be fine if that's the way they took it, but I've met a lot of premeds who take that phrase literally (we have a tendency to treat those kinds of sayings as gospel), and they shouldn't. Absolutes are risky business, especially when they're handed down by the vaunted higherups. The spirit of the message gets distorted. There's a gulf between understanding what you're getting into and believing it's wrong to acknowledge that you'd be happy in other places. Actually, that'd be a much better phrase. "Know what you're getting into".

 

[Dagrimsta1]

Do you have plans to become a physician?
After hearing that what makes you still want to pursue medicine?

I've never met a physician who regretted it either...

 

[Lucca]

I think that careers in healthcare (in particular, nursing and medicine) are definitely not for everyone. I don't see how you could be happy with the training or the professional work and continuing education if you were not excited about serving others. Similarly, i feel that you have to have some interest in scholarly work, social science, public health, basic science, business, politics etc to stay engaged in a rapidly changing professional landscape whose structure is more or less at the whim of the law and is so closely related to technological development and resource management.

So, I definitely think medicine isn't for everybody. I think it's perfectly fine, even expected, for most if not all premeds to be somewhat motivated by prestige and money. But those by themselves can't sustain you. When people give this type of advice, I think they are just trying to discourage people from making the profession to be something that it isn't, or just a way to make a secure upper class living. It is a way to make a secure, upper-class living, but the work isn't for everyone and there are a lot of unhappy people in medicine who might've even gone into it for perfectly good reasons. It's a lot harder to justify jumping ship from clinical medicine to "greener" pastures and the extent to which one can do that is heavily gated by other factors (undergraduate education / pedigree, medical pedigree, other graduate training, geography, etc.) and the training is too long and expensive to be taken lightly.

 

[Promethean]

I agree with the sentiment being expressed. Medicine has too many downsides for anyone to do it if they don't have a strong grasp of their reasons, whatever those may be. And the bad times are made better by having a clear set of motivations that you can go back to, to remind yourself why you are subjecting yourself to the troublesome parts.

But I think taking it too literally would mean screening out all of us who have multiple interests. I can imagine myself doing quite a few other things, and I have done a few of them. It is just that nothing else that I can imagine doing will let me accomplish as many of the things that I'd like to do with the rest of my life. But if this door did close to me, I know that I would find a next best route. Having that sense of assurance of my own resourcefulness and capacity to move toward my goals, even if I couldn't be a physician, doesn't mean that my commitment to medicine is any less than if I, literally, couldn't conceive of alternatives.

 

[RangerBob]

If someone told they couldn't imagine being happy doing anything else then I would honestly question their maturity. True happiness is intrinsic--it is not based on what you do or your situation in life. It is only influenced (and can be profoundly so) by those things. Long-term happiness is really far more dependent on your outlook on life. Two of the happiest people I know are one of our clinic receptionists, and one of the janitors at our VA. We all know people like that. Certainly the job we do can affect our happiness--it just doesn't (or shouldn't) determine it.

If someone really can't learn to be happy in another job, then I'm not so sure they'll really be happy in medicine. None of us really knows what we're getting into (for any job) until we do the job itself. Every job out there has annoying parts about it. You also learn that there are so many things unrelated to your job that have likely more impact on your happiness at work than your job itself (your coworkers personalities/outlook on their job, your boss, your patients/clients, whether your computer keeps rebooting on its own, etc.) These are all things none of us really think about when we're teenagers thinking about the career we want for the rest of our lives.

When I was a teenager and college student, I mostly was interested in jobs based on the idea of what I thought the job was (I can say the same about the girls I was interested in back then too). I did some shadowing/internships (for jobs--not girls!), but that's still not the same as doing it yourself. Still, it's the next best thing.

Choosing a job is similar to choosing a spouse in that it can certainly impact your happiness quite a bit, and you want the right match/fit. However, we get to date our spouse first. You don't actually get to date medicine--living with it and actually practicing it daily.

So there are just so many variables that a leap of faith is required. With medicine, that leap is just larger than most, as you're investing so much early on, in the form of time/money/hard work/delayed gratification. In addition, it is harder to leave medicine as many accumulate so much debt that they may not be able to get another job that pays enough to pay down their debt, whereas it's often easier to leave other jobs if you don't like them. Also, in medicine, some people get so used to/dependent on a six-figure lifestyle that they (or their family) are afraid to downsize, once again making it harder to leave.

There are plenty of other jobs I thought I'd be happy at, and would likely still be really happy to do. Park ranger and high school or community college teacher were at the top. But when it came to what would I like to do with my one and only life, as well as do for that entire life, medicine felt like the right fit.

I encourage people to view medical school and residency as something they should be excited about. They are the start of your medical career. If med school and residency don't excite you, then you need to ask yourself if it's really worth it. That's over 7 years of your life! I'm not sure there's anything out there I'd be willing to suffer 7 years for.

That ended up being longer than I intended. What it really comes down to is getting the best idea of "is medicine for me or not?" Then you take a leap of faith and go for it. You then put one foot in front of the other, and see where your path takes you.

 

[Law2Doc]

It's not so much that you'll regret it, it's just that it's a much longer path, harder, more overnights, more emotionally draining than many other paths that if you go into it thinking it's just a "job" you'll regret it. So you really have to look before you leap and think long and hard about this path. If you can get the same career satisfaction being a scientist or a PA I wouldn't write that off. And if you look at this as "just a job" you are going to find it more demanding and the expectations higher than what you are signing on for. It's a great path for the right person, but definitely not for everyone. If you just want to clock in 9 to 5 for a nice paycheck it's probably not the right path and you'll hate it.

 

[Danny L]

I think the idea that it's easier to get rich through other fields like finance/business is kinda funny. Like IB recruitment season for your junior year internship is absolutely brutal, and your first few years on the job are pretty terrible too, not to mention much less job security, etc

All competitive fields (ie well paying) suck. Just find one you're interested in and good at and go all in

 

[EM2Be2017]

But that's not nearly the same thing as "only become a doctor if you can't imagine yourself doing anything else". It'd be fine if that's the way they took it, but I've met a lot of premeds who take that phrase literally (we have a tendency to treat those kinds of sayings as gospel), and they shouldn't. Absolutes are risky business, especially when they're handed down by the vaunted higherups. The spirit of the message gets distorted. There's a gulf between understanding what you're getting into and believing it's wrong to acknowledge that you'd be happy in other places. Actually, that'd be a much better phrase. "Know what you're getting into".

I agree with your sentiment. I take it more as do medicine if that's what you believe is going to give you the most satisfaction. Before choosing to become a physician I considered a couple other fields in healthcare such as a PA and firefighter/paramedic. After looking at my desires and career aspirations and comparing that to all the possible careers, I didn't believe that any of them would give me the same career satisfaction as being a physician. Luckily I believe I've made the right choice. I'm sure I would have been "happy" overall in my life with the other careers, but being a physician offers opportunities that you can't find anywhere else.

I agree with Law2Doc in that if you truly can see yourself being just as happy being a PA, nurse or whatever, then you should really consider those options. Moreover those other careers in healthcare offer much more freedoms than you will have as a physician.

It really depends on what your goals and desires are. The problem is that you never truly know until you go through it, but you can try to get as much info as possible so you are going in with your eyes wide open. And at the end of the day, you really just have to want it. If you are lukewarm then you are at a greater risk of being dissatisfied.

 

[jmreilly97]

Thanks everyone for the responses! I'm a rising sophomore and I started volunteering at a local hospital last semester. I also have plans to do some shadowing over the summer to get a better idea of life in the medical field. I think what initially drove my desire to be pre-med was attending several physician panels at my school and seeing how passionate many of the physicians were. Although I feel that I'd love a career as a physician and that it's my ultimate goal, it's difficult for me to know if my perceptions are based on facts or just my ideas of what medicine is like. One question I have for all the med students/doctors is what was the defining moment for each of you that solidified your decision to invest the time and money into becoming a doctor?

 

[JB50]

only become a doctor if you can't imagine yourself doing anything else opie.

In all seriousness though, it's a job. And a well paying one. Burnout is a real thing and if you look at the medscape data I think like 50% of people would choose medicine again. Something to think about.

A lot of us have the drive to be successful in other sectors which is why I think that quote exists.

 

[EM2Be2017]

In all seriousness though, it's a job. And a well paying one. Burnout is a real thing...

I still would be careful carrying the idea that it's just a job. As a person I'm very far removed from the old school docs who believe you need to sacrifice your personal life in order to be a good physician, but to at least some degree you have to devote your life to medicine. You are going to spend a minimum of 8 years in school, most likely graduate with >100-200K in debt, and do another 3+ years in residency while your debt continues to balloon. And you will have to keep studying and reviewing the literature of your specialty if you want to give proper patient care. Not to mention the weekends, nights, holidays and family events on call or on-shift. Why would you do that for just a job? I don't think I would have. And depending on your level of debt and income of your specialty, it might not be as well paying as you imagine.

I don't discourage people from pursuing medicine, but I don't want them to go in with false ideas. To the OP, talk with as many docs in different specialties as you can and ask them what they like/dislike about medicine. If you decide medicine is right for you, then you will do the same thing again when you are picking a specialty.