Thursday, February 21, 2008
Sakrfishal Klam
Why in GOD'S NAME would anyone want to be a doctor?!
You spend the last two years of school working your ass off so you can compete with the top 5% of the nerdlosers in the state to get into Med school.
Once there, your days become a monochrome, monotonous lump of memorization and regurgitation.
You go to clinicals so people can tell you how to do things you'll be doing for the next 30 years.
You'll have exams that ALL seem to matter, because if not, you'll get kicked out of aforementioned nerdloser programme.
You've got this for 6 years. 6 long years of memorizing fact after fact after fact about symptoms and diagnoses.
All the while knowing that some poor sucker could live or die based on what you learn TODAY. The stakes are already so damn high, and what happens when you finish med school?
They get even higher. You actually start dealing with patients as an intern, and as a resident, you don't even have a doctor looking after you all the time making SURE you don't kill someone.
All this so that you can get good specialist training and enter into a job that, romantically, is super satisfying and pays for itself.
Right?
No. Doctors start off poor. For the first at least 7 years out of med school, you don't make much. Satisfaction? How many bad, rude, obnoxious, lying, ungrateful patients do you have to go through til that wears off? How many long hours? How many sacrificed relationships? How much lost time with your children? How many deaths that you were somehow connected to? How much mind-numbing guilt?
I think it all boils down to the fact that people who do medicine are very, very sacrificial. Either that or they have no clue what they're getting themselves into. You have your share of memorable patients, of people that you helped, of people you may even have saved....but is it really worth it?
I'm terrified. I don't know which category I fit into: the category of people who, for some reason, think doctors are all the Big Cheese because when she was little, someone put into her head the unshakeable notion that doctors were these wonderful, wonderful, awesome people, saviours of mankind, just below angels.
Or one of those kids who has to keep telling herself that she's a fantastic little sacrificial clam and that what she does matters.
Or just one of those kids who has no bloody idea.
What the hell have I gotten myself into?
You spend the last two years of school working your ass off so you can compete with the top 5% of the nerdlosers in the state to get into Med school.
Once there, your days become a monochrome, monotonous lump of memorization and regurgitation.
You go to clinicals so people can tell you how to do things you'll be doing for the next 30 years.
You'll have exams that ALL seem to matter, because if not, you'll get kicked out of aforementioned nerdloser programme.
You've got this for 6 years. 6 long years of memorizing fact after fact after fact about symptoms and diagnoses.
All the while knowing that some poor sucker could live or die based on what you learn TODAY. The stakes are already so damn high, and what happens when you finish med school?
They get even higher. You actually start dealing with patients as an intern, and as a resident, you don't even have a doctor looking after you all the time making SURE you don't kill someone.
All this so that you can get good specialist training and enter into a job that, romantically, is super satisfying and pays for itself.
Right?
No. Doctors start off poor. For the first at least 7 years out of med school, you don't make much. Satisfaction? How many bad, rude, obnoxious, lying, ungrateful patients do you have to go through til that wears off? How many long hours? How many sacrificed relationships? How much lost time with your children? How many deaths that you were somehow connected to? How much mind-numbing guilt?
I think it all boils down to the fact that people who do medicine are very, very sacrificial. Either that or they have no clue what they're getting themselves into. You have your share of memorable patients, of people that you helped, of people you may even have saved....but is it really worth it?
I'm terrified. I don't know which category I fit into: the category of people who, for some reason, think doctors are all the Big Cheese because when she was little, someone put into her head the unshakeable notion that doctors were these wonderful, wonderful, awesome people, saviours of mankind, just below angels.
Or one of those kids who has to keep telling herself that she's a fantastic little sacrificial clam and that what she does matters.
Or just one of those kids who has no bloody idea.
What the hell have I gotten myself into?
Queen Sana at 2:47 PM
