That being said, medicine can be an incredibly fascinating and rewarding career. The medical field is so unique because you are given power to change people's lives through motivating words and access to a plethora of tools to change a person's chemistry and body for the better. Not only that, with an MD you can gain credibility to write books, develop programs abroad, do research, and be a professor. It opens up a multitude of doors. It's also a good option for a stable job in this economy as doctors are always needed.
The following list of pros and cons were how I figured out whether I wanted to invest in medical school. If you are thinking of applying, I would recommend you also sit down and write out your own.
WHY MEDICAL SCHOOL IS ATTRACTIVE TO ME
Why medical school and becoming a doctor would be awesome for me (Brian Champagne):
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.
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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. 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.
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Can I get into Medical School? -by Brian Champagne August 12th, 2011
You’ve probably heard the numbers before and been appalled: 3.6 GPA and 30.5 MCAT. These are the rough averages for getting into a MD program in the USA. But do you NEED to hit those numbers to get in?
The numbers above are only averages and therefore there is a broad range of scores and GPAs that are accepted to medical school every year. Although balanced numbers are preferred, some students rock a 35 MCAT and a 3.2 GPA and get accepted. Others get in with a 3.9 GPA, and a 27 MCAT. Each school also takes into account letters of rec, your personal statement, your extra-curricular activities, and research experience. But keep in mind that if you don’t have a GPA and MCAT that are within some realistic range of the averages of the schools you want to apply, no number of hospital volunteer hours, leadership experiences or letters of recommendation from Obama himself will get you an acceptance. (Well, maybe ;-p)
Like the subsections in the MCAT, it’s better to get have more balanced numbers. Therefore, it’s probably better to have the 3.6 and 30 than a 4.0 GPA and a 23 MCAT or a 37 MCAT and a 2.8 GPA. Low numbers make it easy to weed applicants out with a simple statistical elimination.
So what if you can’t get in ‘the range.”
If you are not within the range, but your dream is to be a doctor, there are still options. Osteopathic medical schools have slightly lower standard for admittance (around a 3.3 and 27 MCAT depending on the school). Osteopathic medicine is based upon the principle that the body is an integrated whole. It has all of the same elements of medical school plus the additional benefits of osteopathic manipulative techniques to diagnose and treat patients. ‘DOs’, or Osteopathic Doctors, are still licensed doctors in the US and can practice in a variety of specialties. I’ve heard it can be more difficult to enter into certain specific specialties later on in residency. That said, there are orthapedic surgion DOs and a range of specialties, it just takes a bit more red tape crossing to enter into an MD residency program.
Caribbean medical schools also offer admittances with lower averages as well. Schools in the Caribbean are generally cheaper, but it is more difficult to later practice in the States. If you are able to study and get competitive board scores throughout medical school, then your chances of practicing in the states or transferring to a US medical school are high.
Don’t forget that you can work in the healthcare field and not be a doctor!
If patient care and being a health care professional is definitely your thing, consider being a nurse, nurse practitioner or a physician assistant. You could also work in policy or health administration by being a master of public health. Nurses and PAs still work directly with patients and administer drugs, put in IVs and are vital to an efficient medical delivery system. You also might find it better than being a doctor! Nurses don’t have to deal with nearly as much blame for medical errors, malpractice lawsuits, years of schooling, debt, and get to spend more time with patients than doctors. Plus, with a few more years of schooling, nurses can become Nurse Practitioners and gain a higher salary, more skills and responsibility.
