Where does becoming a physician rank in difficulty, in general?

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MetricSystem

MetricSystem

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So I was having a conversation with one of my friends, who is studying to be an engineer (one semester out of a community college, if that's an important information).

The conversation went somewhat like this:
Him - I heard you got accepted to a medical school. Congrats.
Me - Thanks!
Him - When do you start?
Me - Late Julyish.
Him - So how long do you have to study to become a doctor?
Me - Well technically, real studying is for 2 years but it'll take me ~10 years (give or take) to become an attending doctor.
Him - Oh wow! That seems like it's harder than becoming an engineer.
Me - Yea... [silence]

Inside, I was thinking 'Of course... why can you think otherwise,' but that not to saying becoming an engineer is "easy" per se.

Now, that made me think "Where does becoming a physician rank in difficulty, in general?"
Now now, let's not compare becoming a doctor to becoming a president (1 every 4 years).
But comparing to engineers, lawyers, judges, maestro at something, astronaut, general in military, and blah blah blah.

Top 5%? 10%?
Obviously, there may not be a correct answer and it is probably subjective but what do you guys think?
 
MetricSystem said:
Well technically, real studying is for 2 years but it'll take me ~10 years (give or take) to become an attending doctor.
Click to expand...

This strikes me as a bizarre way to explain medical training and honestly comes off as disingenuous. Are you not going to study during your clerkships? For your step 2 and step 3 board exams? During your residency? For your specialty board exams? How about after you are an attending and need to continue taking exams and learning about new treatments and advances in your field?

To answer your question, this is clearly dependent on an individual's strength, weaknesses, skills, likes and dislikes. For me, I believe engineering would be more difficult (i.e. based on my skills, and what I understand about these two professions, I would have a harder time both in training to become an engineer and actually doing the job of one - but of course, I'm not a doctor OR an engineer, so who knows?). For others, being a teacher/lawyer/judge/garbage man would be more difficult. Each profession has hard parts/easy parts, pros/cons. I have no idea what you mean by "difficulty" - do you mean in terms of length of training? Strenuousness of training? Strenuousness of the job on a daily basis?

God, this is almost worse than the "Please rank all the DO schools" threads.
 
This isn't just apples to oranges, it's apples to all other fruit.

Let's take someone who is really, really smart, like Stanford smart. Do you think that person can make it as a Navy Seal? As an USAF tanker pilot? As a nuclear engineer? Versus classical composer? Do you think our own gyngyn or Mimelim can stand up to Bobby Flay in the kitchen, or Gustavo Dudamel??

We're talking massively different skill sets.

MetricSystem said:
So I was having a conversation with one of my friends, who is studying to be an engineer (one semester out of a community college, if that's an important information).

The conversation went somewhat like this:
Him - I heard you got accepted to a medical school. Congrats.
Me - Thanks!
Him - When do you start?
Me - Late Julyish.
Him - So how long do you have to study to become a doctor?
Me - Well technically, real studying is for 2 years but it'll take me ~10 years (give or take) to become an attending doctor.
Him - Oh wow! That seems like it's harder than becoming an engineer.
Me - Yea... [silence]

Inside, I was thinking 'Of course... why can you think otherwise,' but that not to saying becoming an engineer is "easy" per se.

Now, that made me think "Where does becoming a physician rank in difficulty, in general?"
Now now, let's not compare becoming a doctor to becoming a president (1 every 4 years).
But comparing to engineers, lawyers, judges, maestro at something, astronaut, general in military, and blah blah blah.

Top 5%? 10%?
Obviously, there may not be a correct answer and it is probably subjective but what do you guys think?
Click to expand...
 
Okay okay, my apologies. I could have clarified it more.
I meant, how difficult is it in "academic difficulty."
However I feel like you guys would have said the similar things since they require different set of skills,
which I understand.
I got nothing to say to you guys, apparently, people can't ask anything here without getting condescending answers.

On a side note, this may be a reason why some people are afraid to ask questions or speak their mind. Because everyone shoots it down if they don't like it, without trying to help/teach the person.
I do that a lot on here too and I'm going to learn from this and try not to.

Saying "Shut up" may be different than saying "Shut up"
 
@MetricSystem sorry, I certainly didn't mean to be condescending. I don't really know how you expected people to answer the question though, other than by saying variations of "it depends," you know?

I did not realize that there is any kind of culture on this forum of people being afraid to ask questions. If anything, I think evidence points to the fact that people post lots and lots of questions, some of which are more easily answered than others. Sure, sometimes you might get a bunch of snarky responses, but I think more often than not, people here give good advice (even amidst the snark).
 
I thought my time as am engineer was more intellectually demanding than medicine.
 
Yea, its no doubt medical school is more difficult to get into, but that may be more due a larger pool of applicants given the limited number of spots. I'm sure theoretical physics and engineering/applied physics, has far more difficult concepts to learn.
 
cliquesh said:
I thought my time as am engineer was more intellectually demanding than medicine.
Click to expand...
I work with a physician who used to be an engineer. States they are about the same *shrugs*

My dad is an engineer and the schooling is obviously shorter but I think the jobs can be equally difficult
 
Quite a bit more difficult than becoming a basket weaver, now a master basket weaver...
 
Becoming CEO of major company is probably more difficult mostly because its highly improbable. How many people will become like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Elon Musk? Not many. People like them rank higher in society than most doctors.

What about leader of a powerful country like Barack Obama or David Cameron? Even more improbable. And they rank up a lot higher than a doctor. That is particularly so in Cameron's case because in his country doctors are public servants.

Becoming a doctor requires a studying, a lot of it, a lot of time, and a lot of dedication, and also for those of us in the US, a lot of money.
 
People in this topic seem to only be focusing on the knowledge portion of medicine. What about being an orthopedic surgeon? The added stress of having the life of another human being gives medicine an element you don't see in other academic jobs. To simply marginalize learning medicine to "just studying" is disingenuous.
 
Bea5T said:
People in this topic seem to only be focusing on the knowledge portion of medicine. What about being an orthopedic surgeon? The added stress of having the life of another human being gives medicine an element you don't see in other academic jobs. To simply marginalize learning medicine to "just studying" is disingenuous.
Click to expand...

Studying is a big part of becoming a physician, you also have to apply that knowledge you acquire through study in real life too, but you cannot get knowledge without spending long hours and years of study.

There are a lot of other fields that require study as well.
 
Bea5T said:
People in this topic seem to only be focusing on the knowledge portion of medicine. What about being an orthopedic surgeon? The added stress of having the life of another human being gives medicine an element you don't see in other academic jobs. To simply marginalize learning medicine to "just studying" is disingenuous.
Click to expand...
It's not just ortho that you are responsible for the patient. No mater what field of medicine you have to have the innate "want" to take ownership of the patient and be responsible for their care. Just like in urgent care I have the 90 year old in for cough but notice the dry gangrene on their feet. Do I just treat the cough and ignore the rest because they didn't say anything? NO.... that would be malpractice and against what we do. You do the surgical referral and write for some cough medicine.
 
Bea5T said:
People in this topic seem to only be focusing on the knowledge portion of medicine. What about being an orthopedic surgeon? The added stress of having the life of another human being gives medicine an element you don't see in other academic jobs. To simply marginalize learning medicine to "just studying" is disingenuous.
Click to expand...
It's not just surgeons that have people's life directly in their hands lol. All the way down to primary care, rads, and path, you're always just one mistake away from killing someone.
 
Seth Joo said:
Becoming CEO of major company is probably more difficult mostly because its highly improbable. How many people will become like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Elon Musk? Not many. People like them rank higher in society than most doctors.

What about leader of a powerful country like Barack Obama or David Cameron? Even more improbable. And they rank up a lot higher than a doctor. That is particularly so in Cameron's case because in his country doctors are public servants.

Becoming a doctor requires a studying, a lot of it, a lot of time, and a lot of dedication, and also for those of us in the US, a lot of money.
Click to expand...
Agreed. What isn't being stated us that there is a path to becoming a doctor. A long, grueling, expensive path, but a set path. There is no path to being a CEO or tech giant. Hundreds of thousands top off as mid level engineers or bankruptcy lawyers, compared to the few that become president, Steve jobs or state senator. No shame to them; it's a matter of odds
 
cabinbuilder said:
It's not just ortho that you are responsible for the patient. No mater what field of medicine you have to have the innate "want" to take ownership of the patient and be responsible for their care.
Click to expand...

Except ortho. They're masters of "not it!"
 
DocWinter said:
Agreed. What isn't being stated us that there is a path to becoming a doctor. A long, grueling, expensive path, but a set path. There is no path to being a CEO or tech giant. Hundreds of thousands top off as mid level engineers or bankruptcy lawyers, compared to the few that become president, Steve jobs or state senator. No shame to them; it's a matter of odds
Click to expand...

Its a lot harder to become a Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk than a Doctor. A Doctor takes a high level of dedication and intelligence of course but those are very unique individuals and those people are much higher up than someone who works in an office and does a physical examination on you.

In the US, people put a high status on physicians but in other countries this is not the case, David Cameron who is British lives in a country where physicians are public employees much like postal workers and police officers. A doctor is considered to be a middle class profession in that country.
 
Bea5T said:
People in this topic seem to only be focusing on the knowledge portion of medicine. What about being an orthopedic surgeon? The added stress of having the life of another human being gives medicine an element you don't see in other academic jobs. To simply marginalize learning medicine to "just studying" is disingenuous.
Click to expand...
From my understanding of it, every time they pick up the knife it is not some revolutionary or stressful event where they consider all of the aspects of holding a human being in their hands. Its just a job - bust out the old hip, pick up a hammer and smack in the new hip. Think of it as fixing a car. I am not saying its not stressful, but honestly, the stress that I have seen is usually from insurance and payment issues and being able to keep the lights in their business on, not the actual practice of medicine itself. They were trained to operate, they have thousands of hours operating (or delivering complex meds/diagnoses in non-surgical specialties), its memory and recall. Again, this going along the lines of other people saying its not intellectually incredibly hard, but it is a lot of hard work to remember all of that stuff.
 
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Seth Joo said:
Its a lot harder to become a Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk than a Doctor. A Doctor takes a high level of dedication and intelligence of course but those are very unique individuals and those people are much higher up than someone who works in an office and does a physical examination on you.

In the US, people put a high status on physicians but in other countries this is not the case, David Cameron who is British lives in a country where physicians are public employees much like postal workers and police officers. A doctor is considered to be a middle class profession in that country.
Click to expand...
Heh, we are well on our way to the same thing soon... Its already happening.
 
cabinbuilder said:
An attending once told me that being a doctor isn't that hard, it's just that it take a huge amount of stubbornness to make it through to the end game.
Click to expand...

I talked to a LOT of doctors before I started this process - and this was the universal consensus.
 
Seth Joo said:
Its a lot harder to become a Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk than a Doctor. A Doctor takes a high level of dedication and intelligence of course but those are very unique individuals and those people are much higher up than someone who works in an office and does a physical examination on you.

In the US, people put a high status on physicians but in other countries this is not the case, David Cameron who is British lives in a country where physicians are public employees much like postal workers and police officers. A doctor is considered to be a middle class profession in that country.
Click to expand...

Steve Jobs/Elon Musk vs Joe MD/DO isn't a good comparison. The better comparison is Steve Jobs/Elon Musk vs James Andrews/Charles Mayo.
 
Bea5T said:
People in this topic seem to only be focusing on the knowledge portion of medicine. What about being an orthopedic surgeon? The added stress of having the life of another human being gives medicine an element you don't see in other academic jobs. To simply marginalize learning medicine to "just studying" is disingenuous.
Click to expand...

The title of the post specifically refers to "becoming" a physician rather than the actual responsibility, which I agree with you on.
 
Lets see... only like 25% of people get a degree? Of those 25% how many even have the capability of being a pre med and making it through the pre reqs? Maybe 1 in 10 tops (realistically less than that). Lets say 2.5% of the population can get through pre-med. Now of that 2.5% how many take the MCAT? How many do well enough to have a shot at admissions? How many have been able to multitask many different things (ECs, volunteering, work, etc.) while still getting a solid GPA? How many have good enough social skills to make it through interviews?

When you compound those things together, only a small percentage of the population even has the ability to have a remote shot at getting into med school. Thing is, you're competing against many of the top end students in university. No other profession has this much competition and hence ranks lower.

So yes becoming a doctor is very difficult. 🙂
 
cabinbuilder said:
An attending once told me that being a doctor isn't that hard, it's just that it take a huge amount of stubbornness to make it through to the end game.
Click to expand...
Keep in mind most attendings people talk to got accepted during the days where getting into a med school with an 18 MCAT was very much doable and a bit common. Nowadays the game has changed... you need to be very intelligent (relative to the average person on the street - who has no degree at all) to make it in.
 
Seth Joo said:
I heard about Walmart opening up primary care clinics. Face palm to that. Imagine wearing one of those blue Walmart coats??
Click to expand...
If Walmart really cared about primary care, it would remove all the $h!t from its shelves first. But, obviously there's no money in that. Maybe McDonalds should open up some clinics and offer a free Big Mac with every check up. :dead:

At some point we need to get a lot better at primary care and preventative medicine in the right way.

Unfortunately, I don't see anything changing until it's too late. That is, kids and teens dying from preventable diseases like type II diabetes.
 
doapplicant2015 said:
The title of the post specifically refers to "becoming" a physician rather than the actual responsibility, which I agree with you on.
Click to expand...
Technically you're right, but I'd consider residency still apart of the "becoming" process. Its far and away the most important stage of training.
 
studentp0x said:
Keep in mind most attendings people talk to got accepted during the days where getting into a med school with an 18 MCAT was very much doable and a bit common. Nowadays the game has changed... you need to be very intelligent (relative to the average person on the street - who has no degree at all) to make it in.
Click to expand...
Not really, just a good test taker. Worst doctor I ever had to deal with got a 796/800 on Comlex III. My job solely in residency was to keep her from killing patients. She was totally scary. Give me the average joe any day to take care of me.
 
DocWinter said:
Agreed. What isn't being stated us that there is a path to becoming a doctor. A long, grueling, expensive path, but a set path. There is no path to being a CEO or tech giant. Hundreds of thousands top off as mid level engineers or bankruptcy lawyers, compared to the few that become president, Steve jobs or state senator. No shame to them; it's a matter of odds
Click to expand...

The path to becoming a doctor is fairly straight forward, the path to becoming a titan of an industry or pioneer is not, becoming Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Elon Musk, Einstein, some other avante garde person high stature is extremely difficult and highly improbable for the vast majority of us, and in the end is that what really want in life? I wonder.

Anyway at the end of the day its not what others think but how you think and you feel about yourself.
 
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cabinbuilder said:
Not really, just a good test taker. Worst doctor I ever had to deal with got a 796/800 on Comlex III. My job solely in residency was to keep her from killing patients. She was totally scary. Give me the average joe any day to take care of me.
Click to expand...
Being a good or bad test taker doesnt mean THAT big of a difference. Maybe a 27 to a 33... the rest cant be made up by simply being a better test taker.
Also book smarts dont always translate over to practical skills and knowledge. However you do require a very high level of book smarts to retain enough knowledge to become a physician. I'd also argue that anyone who isnt book smart cant be considered intelligent in any way. But once we start comparing people who are smarter and smarter in the classroom, then the "real life" correlation doesnt exist anymore.

Anyway I think your post perfectly explains how hard it is to be a good physician. Not only do you require book smarts to have the necessary knowledge but you also need the real world smarts to actually be effective in the clinical setting.
 
cabinbuilder said:
An attending once told me that being a doctor isn't that hard, it's just that it take a huge amount of stubbornness to make it through to the end game.
Click to expand...

My stepfather is a physician, and he told me something similar: "Being a doctor isn't hard to do, it's just hard to GET to do."
 
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No offense to anybody. But URM and Caribean applicants with very low (or lower than average students) GPAs and MCAT (talking about 3.0 and 20 MCAT) still make it to and through med schools and become good physicians; so being physicians may not be that extremely difficult that the media and SDNs make out to be. We definitely are not talking about MIT level of difficulty here.
 
MetricSystem said:
Now, that made me think "Where does becoming a physician rank in difficulty, in general?"
Now now, let's not compare becoming a doctor to becoming a president (1 every 4 years).
But comparing to engineers, lawyers, judges, maestro at something, astronaut, general in military, and blah blah blah.

Top 5%? 10%?
Obviously, there may not be a correct answer and it is probably subjective but what do you guys think?
Click to expand...

I don't think it can be compared. There are a lot of professions you've listed that I have a lot of respect for and each is difficult in their own way. To be judged by academics alone doesn't exactly characterize the whole person. There are some professions that require a lot of social pizazz that could never be reached by a typical lab rat or book worm. A person who is a "maestro" owns their instrument through years of practice and an innate creativity that can draw feels from the audience. A typical general in the military has an advanced degree, has maybe distinguished themselves in combat (i.e. being brave in the face of death), and has the capacity to effect thousands of lives with a single decision. A good engineer can build a bridge that won't collapse and kill everyone on it, can send a satellite out into space, can build a car like the Tesla. A high level businessman or politician has to balance the interests of several people above and below them to achieve a common goal.

My point with this rant is that anyone who functions at a high level in any of these fields through a combination of hard work and innate talent deserves respect, and to compare them on a ranked list is silly. The person you can disrespect is the person who doesn't take their job seriously. A structural engineer who glides by? A military general who clocks it in and shirks his duty? A judge who lets their personal biases get in the way? A hospitalist who hasn't opened a book in years and/or is careless on the job? These are the people you can demonize, because they do not take their significant jobs seriously and others will suffer because of it. How else can they be described except as embarrassments to humanity?

To be a solid medical student, you have to have average intelligence, be able to work extremely hard, be resilient, and have the social skills of a 22 year old. To be a good doc, you have to continue to work hard, improve your knowledge base, improve your ability to talk about serious stuff, so that more of your patients get better rather than worse. Don't worry about whether you are better than an engineer. Worry about what type of doctor and person you'll be once you're done with this circus.
 
It depends on what is difficult for someone.

If it's based on the amount of time needed to train someone, I would say that it's near the top because it requires medical school+residency+possible fellowship.

If it's based on the difficulty to grasp the material, I would say that it depends. An engineer needs to be good at math. They need to know how to use formulas and how to make assumptions to simplify complex engineering problems. A doctor needs to be good at vast memorization and be good with people (depending on specialty). I wouldn't say one is harder than the other because they both require different strengths. An engineer does not have to memorize that much. Most of my tests were open book and an engineer can look up formulas. They only need to know how to apply formulas. A doctor does not have to do any math that's higher than basic algebra. They don't need to know how to create the biomedical devices that they use on patients. They only need to know how to use them and interpret the results.
 
cabinbuilder said:
Not really, just a good test taker. Worst doctor I ever had to deal with got a 796/800 on Comlex III. My job solely in residency was to keep her from killing patients. She was totally scary. Give me the average joe any day to take care of me.
Click to expand...

Scary in what way? I'm just curious because the people I've bumped into with scores like that are actually quite good
 
thepoopologist said:
Scary in what way? I'm just curious because the people I've bumped into with scores like that are actually quite good
Click to expand...
Doing procedures that she was not qualified to do, giving the wrong medication at the wrong dosing. Admitting patients that should have been transferred because critical care is her favorite so she could practice her medical skills on them. Lots of psych issues, was dismissed from a different residency due to patient endangerment, etc. She was taken by our medical director solely for her test taking skills to give him good numbers. He was very sick and twisted too.
 
A little aside: when I told my PCP that I wanted to go to medical school, he replied very nonchalantly, "well, it's not harder than anything else you're going to have to do." Definitely not the usual response, can't tell if he's a genius or holds life in a different, super-chill perspective (but I suspect the latter).
 
Sasquatch43 said:
A little aside: when I told my PCP that I wanted to go to medical school, he replied very nonchalantly, "well, it's not harder than anything else you're going to have to do." Definitely not the usual response, can't tell if he's a genius or holds life in a different, super-chill perspective (but I suspect the latter).
Click to expand...

Primary care is not that hard, if you talked to a CT surgeon you might get a different answer.
 
Seth Joo said:
Primary care is not that hard, if you talked to a CT surgeon you might get a different answer.
Click to expand...

I think he meant more so medical school, not his work as a physician (although I suppose you could say that he didn't need to do as well as a student who aspired to be a CT surgeon). Although he also has a PhD, which is pretty impressive in my mind.
 
Seth Joo said:
Primary care is not that hard, if you talked to a CT surgeon you might get a different answer.
Click to expand...
"Primary Care is not that hard"

Have you had a bad primary care physician? Because then you might think differently.
 
electrical Engineer father, who I consider the most street mart guy out there always tells me anyone can be a doctor. check over seas where students bribe their way into medical school. they make it out and practice. happens a lot. I know a few ppl.
 
It's not really that "hard" to become a doctor. You just have to work hard, not give up, and show up on time for several years. Everything from day 1 of undergrad to the last day of residency is laid out for you if you want to be a doctor. You always know the next step to "success".

Now, if you want to be a successful musician, star, politician, news anchor, public figure, etc.- that's what I consider hard. Why? Because the path is not laid out for you. You have to find the path on your own.
 
It's not too hard to become a doc..............But it's hard becoming a great doc 😉
This applies to everything, it's never too hard to do anything but you usually want to do stand out among your peers, that's where the hard part begins, and that's when you need to bust your butt.
Now actually obtaining the degree, well that depends on personal preference as mentioned above; Some find a major easier than others and vice versa.
 
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