Why I choose Medicine

My passion for medicine began in high school as a Junior when I heard from a Pediatrician who had traveled to many impoverished places in the world such as Guatemala and Africa to provide medical care to the poor. Prior to this, I had little interest in any career, but after hearing his story, I saw medicine as a challenge, an outlet for my interest in Biology, and a way to use my people skills. Later, I went to college as a Biology major and traveled to Mexico with a group called FISH (Fellowship of International Service and Health). We set up a clinic on the side of a market and saw patients, doing blood pressure tests and blood glucose tests. I LOVED IT! The direct patient interaction and feeling like I was really helping to educate people about their health were exhilarating. It also made me determined to learn Spanish, so I took classes and later lived in Guatemala, and now I am fluent (or something close to it). Being the determined person I am, I dedicated a couple of years to getting into medical school. I survived the MCAT through an intense summer of Princeton Review (my least favorite part of the process of getting into medical school). I volunteered in Thornton Emergency Room, lead a chapter of FISH, and became an EMT. I spent thousands on getting into medical school and was successful in six of my eight interviews. I received acceptance to UCSD in October of 2009 and it was one of the best day of my life.

Then a few months ago, I began to deeply question my intentions to go to medical school and become a doctor. Over the past two years, I’ve talked with unsatisfied and even depressed doctors in both the USA and abroad, read books that challenged the efficacy of American medicine and highlighted the unique difficulties faced by doctors within the U.S. I shadowed physicians who saw some of the same patients and problems over and over and OVER again. I hung out with medical students who were in debt tens of thousands of dollars and who studied twelve hours a day. I read pages of blogs of medical students who were fed up with the career, but who couldn’t leave the profession because of the staggering debt. I also traveled to Honduras and worked with doctors who were only able to prescribe very temporary drugs for poor people, and were dismayed by their inability to make a lasting difference.

During my year off, I’ve confirmed that I could make similar wages through less effort in private tutoring than being a doctor. I realized the newest form of income security might be choosing multiple part-time jobs in various, high-demand fields. I’ve dreamed up ideas for creating businesses, developed excitement for becoming a freelance dance instructor, online ESL teacher, tutor of several subjects, founder of a non-profit org, an employer, an inventor and even a simultaneous playing multi-instrument street musician.

I’ve developed new skills in language learning and interpreting, and interests in martial arts, dance, pleasure reading, painting, mechanics, cooking, traveling and overall living a life with a lot of variety.

After seeing people pursuing their own passions and reading the Four Hour Work Week, I realized that the possibility of weaving together most of these creative passions and jobs is certainly possible while still maintaining a stable income.

I’ve realized that I am a more independent person than I had originally thought; that I could work well being self-employed and that I could live happily anywhere in the world with very little money.

Through my travels in multiple continents over the past year, I’ve talked to hundreds of people from dozens of countries about what they do and how they live their lives. I’ve been jealous of those who do little work to gain lots of money, turned off by the number of people who have no particular interest in their jobs, and inspired by people who formulated their lives around their passions.

I then re-contemplated. “How is it that I want to live and be happy?” Or even better.

“What is it that I NEED to live and to be happy?” I came up with a few things.

I NEED to live a life that combines my combination of language, people, and science/math minded skills to make a sustainable and hopefully measurable impact on others, especially those who are impoverished or stricken by injustices.
I NEED to live a balanced life that cultivates my many passions, challenges myself, and allows me to learn new things, and grow spiritually.
I NEED to be loved by and love others and have enough time to develop and keep a sustainable community of friends.
I NEED/(well….probably just really want) a stable income.

I know that I am not able to live my life without any one of these necessities. So I concluded that all of them could be fulfilled WITHOUT medical school and all of the cons that come with that. There are a multitude of ways to help people and maybe in an even more lasting manner than medicine. I could start an ESL program for immigrants looking to build their opportunities in the world and I could find a way to measurably examine its degree of impact. Then I would balance the rest of my life out in a way that made sense likely switching from one passion to the next. If I really wanted to develop unique medical skills, I could fly to a developing country, learn its language, and find a shorter medical program to perform specific surgeries there as has been done in India and regions in Africa. It would never provide me with the certification to do it in the US, but at least I would be able to develop some of the skills I originally wanted to make a sustainable impact.

Done. I’m decided.

Then again…
And what if I got bored or burned out from switching from one job to the next?

What if very few of my ideas succeed?

If they do succeed would I get I get bored of them later on?

What if I ended up wanting something still more challenging?

What if a few years down the road, I realize what I could have done as a doctor?

What if I always regretted that chance I had to pursue medicine?

In reality, if I moved forward with the multi job plan, I would probably never find a job that laced, my skills of patience, teaching, science, culture, people and language together as perfectly as medicine does. My ultimate love for medicine is not just that it allows people to live a higher quality of life and fulfill their own dreams, but that it takes a decathlete of a person to be good at it. It’s more than an imperfect science or just knowing a lot of information. It’s understanding people holistically, where they are coming from, what their resources are, and how they are motivated. You need to know this in order to determine what path is best for them, how that path should be encouraged, and by what means that path should be undertaken. It’s leadership and tact. It’s knowing your limitations and acting accordingly. In medicine, no single life influencing factor in a patient is unimportant. Each patient’s emotional health, spiritual walk, diet, and personal daily decisions are all crucial to each person’s health status. And this is what makes medicine a unique and irreplaceable endeavor for me.

The reality is that people NEED medical professionals. In the USA, there are almost 50 million Hispanics who need Spanish speaking doctors that can understand them. There is predicted to be a shortage of 40,000 family practice physicians in the USA by 2020. It’s crazy to think that there only two doctors for every 100,000 citizens in developing countries like Malawi.

I could always find methods to help people in other ways, but medical school will provide me outlets to develop UNIQUE and needed skills for my own job and for vulnerable populations. If I didn’t go to medical school, I’d be missing out on some valuable connections to brilliant doctors, a workable and detailed knowledge of medicine, and a degree to practice. It will give me a plethora of opportunities to show people God’s love for them and further opportunities that I can’t even imagine right now since I’m not there yet.

My concerns still exist. There will be times when profit-driven medical insurance companies will frustrate me, malpractice lawsuits will haunt me, theoretical memorization will burden me, and residency will likely not be my ideal lifestyle. I’ll forget some information, I’ll make mistakes with patients, and get yelled at sometimes. Furthermore, the inadequacy of medicine as a vessel in promoting health will mean that I’ll need to be inventive and collaborate with other health giving assets like nutritional supplements, public health measures, infrastructure, and digital awareness to name a few of the many essential compliments to making a lasting change on individuals and within communities.

I’m lucky to have been given the chance of a lifetime to pursue my a worthy passion, and I have a head up in knowing what difficulties I will face. The key will be to take each challenge in stride. Every down side in medicine comes with an opportunity to change it or deal with it in a reasonable way.

The hours spent in medical school are relatively flexible and this means I can learn to become a more efficient, effective learner in order to balance in other interests. My other dreams of executing creative ideas, learning other forms of martial arts, dancing, traveling and learning surgery and other languages abroad in my lifetime are not dead.

If there is one thing that living a multitude of lifestyles has taught me, it’s that when I have more to do, I tend to use my free time better. I’m often able to do more recreationally than I would if I had an entire free day. This too can be used to my advantage in medical school. As one med student put it, “Medical school is a lot of intensity - you study intensely but you also live intensely. Every moment is important.”

And every moment will be what I’ll make of it. Decisions are important, but they are still only streams to new lifestyles and challenges. Life was made to love it throughout all of its twists, rough spots, and joyous times, and I’m grateful to be able to enjoy the next step of it.

Special thanks to Peter Wisan, Jimmy Bui, Kari Kjos, David Carreon, Elise Ter Haar, Darrell Tran, Kaitlyn Losey, Katherine Lee, Lisa Rasmussen, Jessica Chan, Blake Spitzer, Chris Ha and Ashley Champagne for carefully considering my concerns and for not pushing me in any direction, but rather helping me to organize my thoughts to make the least regrettable decision.

Why Medical School is attractive to me

Why medical school and becoming a doctor would be awesome:

1. I could develop important, unique, and needed medical skills to use for impoverished populations. In certain developing countries, there is only one doctor for every half a million people. It would be worthwhile to use my MD degree to address some of the significant health needs of the people living there. With an MD, I could more easily create medical teams to accomplish specific health goals in countries or local populations.

2. With my interest and ability in science, research, psychology, use of languages, and education, medical school would be very interesting to me.

3. I would like a career that is challenging to me; a career path to become a doctor will definitely be challenging enough 

4. From my experiences, the relatively flexible schedule and hours of medical school will make me value my free time and really use it well.

5. Being a doctor opens doors for making greater change within the medical system, and having credibility for writing books on health or getting into medical school. I also have some ideas for improving the delivery of care, and the nature of the hospital experience for each patient. These goals would be more easily achieved by being a doctor.

6. I could network through many doctors and medical students, build new relationships, and learn new skills and ideas that I never would have known without going to medical school.

7. I love how medicine is ultimately about finding ways to improve the well being of people when they injured, sick, pain-stricken, or just plain feel bad.

8. It will allow me to have a greater influence on people because they will respect my opinion more regarding their personal health and lifestyle decisions if I am an MD.

Personal hesitations about Medical School

Hesitations about medical school:

Before I invest over $120,000 and over 15,000 hours of studying into four years of medical school as well as work long hours for low wages in residency, I’d like to address some of my personal concerns about doing it.

Am I ready for more theoretical learning/memorization of irrelevant facts? I’m not looking forward to several more years of memorizing the Krebs cycle, studying action potentials etc. Throughout college, I found some of the information interesting, but mainly my goal was getting through all of it by sheer dedication to my studies and being re-compensated for it through doing well on tests and gaining the feeling of “getting somewhere.” This somewhere for me was medical school. Of course in medical school, there is more of that waiting for me.

Is it my ideal lifestyle? Although my ideal lifestyle does include working 50-60 hours/week as I would probably be doing anyway throughout medical school, I would prefer the freedom to work on what I desire as opposed to learning information that is pre-chosen for me. Additionally, I can’t say I’m excited for working for 80 hours a week throughout residency for several years. Talking with other prospective medical students, they feel the same way, but they justify it as it all pays off in the end. Given an investment of over $120,000 for four years and working for low wages and 80 hour weeks for another four years, I would hope it would.

Would I get bored with the same job? I like a lot of variety in my life. I’ve been realizing that I might not be able to do just one job all of my life regardless of what it is. In order to stay interested, I think I would prefer doing multiple jobs or a lot of different and new challenges within the same job. Because medicine is becoming more and more specialized, (as it should if efficiency is the aim) that also means that the career responsibilities are less diverse. I’ve seen family practice doctors who’s jobs I would abhor because most of the patients come in with similar issues. The one doctor I shadowed who I felt had a good amount of variety and challenges within her job through being a bilingual Pediatrician and Family practice Doctor said she felt she was getting bored of her job and needed more of a challenge. I suppose doing anything for too long will produce that sort of a feeling.

Will I help people as much as I’m thinking I will? The nature of a doctor's work is little known by people who are not in the field, and most people just take it as you are helping people. In my opinion, it's not quite that simple for a few reasons. Our achievement-driven society often looks to doctors to medicate themselves and children. Attention Deficit Disorder is far over diagnosed and wasn’t even a classified disorder until recently. Thinking about it, I’d hate to succumb to parents wishes of diagnosing their children with it and prescribing Ritalin and Adderall to boost their focus in school. After reading several articles and the book Pushed, I’ve realized that there are many other controversies regarding quick interventions for other psychotic disorders, and childbirth. You might say “but you could still take trips to other countries and help people there.” After participating in a Global Medical Brigades trip to Honduras, I had a long discussion with the doctor there about how much she felt she was helping. She mentioned how she felt she was just prescribing hundreds of temporary treatments like Tylenol and Asprin without providing a sustainable impact on any of them. I’m not saying that all medical work abroad is like this, but for me it would be crushing to see a whole lifetime of investment lead to ineffective work with good intentions. I talked with other students about our impact, and we came to the conclusion that at no one can refute that our intentions were positive and that is what is REALLY important. But I already have good intentions. My science wired mind needs to see positive results of my work for me to be satisfied. Aside from this, I’m also not looking forward to seeing patient after patient who enters my clinic with a cough or cold. I want to make a change, not distribute medicines to mildly sick and overly concerned people who would probably get better anyway. Although I could choose to work around these situations eventually, I would inevitably confront many of them for years before I would have the chance to work with people to make a lasting change.

Do I want to work within the USA’s style of medicine? I’ve never been a fan our large, profit driven insurance and drug companies that try to wield doctors into making them gain more money. Nor am I excited about HMOs running a business over me that will severely limit the time I spend with each patient. I’m also not too keen on potentially being sued for making a mistake or hurting someone because of it as all physicians do from time to time. What would make me more irate is not having the ability to be confess my mistakes with patients for fear of providing incriminating evidence against myself in court. After reading a few books by Atul Gawande, I realized this is one of the biggest difficulties in his job.

How much material will I actually retain after studying? Although I’d love to say that I would have a complete understanding of medicine and be able to answer any medical question asked to me after four years of medical school, I believe the reality would be far from that. I like everyone else, forget things. How long does it take for me to forget something I’ve studied and used multiple times (as opposed to a one time fact)? My estimation would be about one month, and much less time for information that was never used on a consistent basis. In fact, after using my combination lock all throughout South America and Thailand, then coming home and not touching it for just over a month, the numbers became disordered in my long term memory. I had to buy a new one. Looking at the years of “drinking medical information out of a fire hose,” as the medical school saying goes, and speaking with other medical students about how much they remember from prior years, I’ve come to the conclusion that what a person learns at the beginning of one year will soon be forgotten in a few months unless actively worked upon. It of course will be actively studied again and again and again for school exams and USMLEs. In my opinion after school, only some of the concepts, and something like .2% of relevant information will be used for one’s job. Feel free to disagree if you are a medical student or doctor.