Would anyone be interested in contributing to a website?

[youngdocstudent]

Would anyone here be interested in contributing to a website, meant to motivate and inspire jaded medical students? Where medical students can contribute ideas, thoughts, and motivational experiences.
Do you all see a need for this?

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[Psai]

No

 

[Law2Doc]

Would anyone here be interested in contributing to a website, meant to motivate and inspire jaded medical students? Where medical students can contribute ideas, thoughts, and motivational experiences.
Do you all see a need for this?

First, I think SDN already does this. Second I think "jaded" is a nonspecific symptom and not always appropriately addressed through motivation, inspiration and encouragement. Are they jaded because they are suddenly realizing medicine isn't that cushy job where you earn tons of money living like a rap star while "helping people"? Jaded because they realize they hate the job function? If that's why they are jaded, maybe encouragement would only serve to get them in deeper. Sometimes telling someone to cut their losses and jettison may not be the same feel good message but it sometimes is the better life message. Medicine is not for everyone and sometimes the "it gets better" cheerleading isn't always going to turn these jaded individuals into happy doctors. Just saying.

 

[sloop]

To be honest, not really.

If you're talking about students getting depressed, that's really the job of their school's student psychiatrist.

If you're talking about getting "jaded" in the sense of losing that spark of "this is the most magical profession ever and it's gonna be totally awesome," I think that's a normal process and I don't actually think we should fight against it. That's the sort of 4th cradle career fair stuff that we do to get kids to dream and aspire. As you grow up, you start to understand reality more and your motivations need to be more grounded in reality. At the end of the day, medicine is just a job. It fan give great satisfaction, but you can't expect the world from it.

The people who really suffer from this type of transition are the ones who can't let go of the dream because it was the one thing they thought would give their life purpose and meaning. Purpose and meaning need to come from within, not from external recognition, validation or status. All that stuff is nice but it's not durable. You can't be a well-adjusted human being if your entire reality comes crumbling down when you learn something more about some group you belong to or some activity you engage in.

In summary: I think you have this backwards. It is not becoming jaded that is the problem—it's the dream people get sold in the first place.

 

[youngdocstudent]

Thanks for all your comments. To further clarify, sometimes students need sometime motivation. Regardless of everyone's passion that they come in with when med school starts, there are moments where you question it - and thats only because you're so far in a tunnel sometimes you can't see the light. Humans need reminders.

I see students sharing inspiring stories on facebook all the time, about stories or motivational experiences, and after speaking with them, these kinds of stories help them to give them new perspective.

Further, a platform like this could help them understand new perspectives of medicine, things they have never realized. We're focused on studying hard science, but what about the small, more "common sense" things that sometimes doctors are not exposed to until they are an attending? These 4 years of med school are part of our life, and thus, I think it may be useful to have a website where students can share perspectives and learn from each other...to read an article that made me say, "oh wow, never thought of that!".