Onco-
1. How did you answer the question of "Why medicine now?"
I would give a variant of the answer shown below. I changed it up every time and adapted the length and tone of my answer to my interviewer (some liked short, snappy answers; others were more talkative and personable). I'm convinced that there isn't a "right answer" to this kind of question. It's all part of the interviewer getting to know you. It's very much about you just telling them what your reasons are in a way that shows you have qualities that would make you an excellent student and eventually, an excellent physician. Physicians are trained to read people so my answering this question was more a vehicle for them to get a "read" on me as opposed to convincing them that I really had a iron-clad case with powerful reasoning or logic.
I expanded on those aspects they found interesting and cut off those parts that didn't seem to be communicating anything that they wanted to know. Since this answer is "static" and not adapted to you, the reader, it really doesn't give you a very good picture of how I answer questions:
This just gives you a very rough idea ... a long answer that might serve as an introduction/overview to get things started. Later answers in the interview would tend to be much more specific to a particular experience or interest:
I was running a small engineering company when I made the decision. Basically I traveled more & more and was away from my family more & more. I didn't mind working long hours, but my family didn't like it that I wasn't around much. Even if I was only working a mere 40 hours while traveling, I might as well have been working 168 hours/week because they didn't get to see me.
I decided to look into a career change that didn't involve travel and considered career options outside of engineering as well. I could have gotten a business or engineering job that didn't involve much travel, but many of those jobs were not as challenging as I would like and would have required some significant retooling anyway, as they were different from my experience. Teaching in my field was another option, but somehow I never had much satisfaction from publishing papers; I wanted to make more direct & tangible contributions.
One trend I found as a business owner is that health insurance costs kept going up every year and coverage was going down. This was curious when many other costs were going down or changing with inflation. Through researching the field, I found that we have an aging population and the number of physicians were unlikely to keep up -- a potential problem in the future. I considered many ways I could help with that issue, everything from becoming a government lobbyist to going into teaching. After much soul searching, I came to the conclusion that medicine, perhaps academic medicine with a significant hands-on clinical role, was the best fit for me.
There were many other factors that guided me toward medicine. My wife is in the healthcare field and she was also an inspiration in this respect. I would never have made this career change without her encouragement and strong support. I volunteered at a hospital and hospice and those experiences helped validate the idea that medicine would be a great field for me.
I did well in my career and have always had a love for science. Medicine also seemed to be a good fit for my interests with respect to science and problem solving, didn't involve travel, and enabled me to give something back to society. I was also looking for an area in which I could make life better for people. In engineering, I was able to reduce costs and help develop products to improve life. In medicine, I could see a new opportunity for me to accomplish the same thing, but in a different way.
When I was younger I though medicine was "too slow" because you basically diagnose and treat patients one at a time. In engineering, you have the opportunity to make a product that will help millions of people at one time. However, now that I'm older I realize that it's not just the number of people's lives you improve. For one thing, in engineering the work is often far removed from the life you are making a difference in because you sit in a lab or office and only see your coworkers and clients. Thus, there are many ways of making a contribution, and even just helping one person seems worth a lot of effort to me now.
There are many personal reasons why I considered going into medicine. I am a parent and have had numerous exposures to the medical profession, usually in something related to my kids or another family member. I would say those experiences where I was able to administer first aid and actually do something to contribute to the health of another person were particularly rewarding for me.
Finally, I'm also doing a post-doc now that is helping me explore my medical research interests. I have spoken to numerous physicians, and I don't have an idyllic notion of the medical field. Many said they could not see themselves going into this field at my stage of life. However, I'm a bit of a workaholic, enjoy a challenging job, and deal well with stress. I look forward to serving in the medical field and will look for opportunities to combine my new clinical knowledge with my research, engineering, and business experience.
