Medical School?

Question

If you know from your own experience or from someone you know, please tell me that. If not, just tell me what you know. I know that medical school won`t be easy, but I want someone to describe what it will be like to me. I know it will be hard, but is it a lot of work type hard or can barely understand this stuff type hard? That made sense to me; I`m not sure if it would to anyone else. What I`m asking is for someone to describe medical school to me as much as they can. All I`ve been getting is "its tough," or "its a lot of work." I want more details. Also, if you are or know a doctor, describe your usual activities, experiences, hours, and anything else you would like to share with me. If you have some advice, that woul be great too.

Was being a doctor worth what it takes to get there?

Answer 1

This question gets a star. The reason is that you posed the question in an open ended fashion using requests such a "describe". A ton of people ask on here whether or not medical school is the right choice. Clearly that's the wrong way to ask the question! I wouldn't be able to make the recommendation one way or the other even for someone I know well. Things like this can only be done through introspection and information sifting. This is why you get the star and they didn't.

I entered medical school at age 29, which is about 5 years older than the norm for the previous generation of doctors. In my generation, though, there are an increasing number of second career students and late bloomers. Thanks to a few gray-haired students in my class, I was actually right on top of the arithmetic average age in a group of about 150. There is something to be said for bringing in some life experiences other than college life. I wouldn't recommend it one way or the other, but I will say this: medical school drew on everything I had to offer. This included things I learned from school and things I learned in other arenas. Nothing went to waste. Many other people will tell you something similar even when their backgrounds were significantly different than mine. What this tells you is that medical school requires a total committment of personal resources. Whatever you've got going for you, you'll find a way to make use of it along the way.

In general, medical schools require 2 years of predominantly lecture/lab classes and 2 years of predominantly in-hospital clinical training. The pre-clinical classes in medical schools can be diced into parts in a number of ways. They all basically come out the same. The first year might be dominated by learning the normal function of the human body, and the second year might be dominated by learning about disease. Alternately, the courses might be divided by bodily systems mixing together health and then disease states for each one. Whatever happens, there are a series of daily lectures and lab times. In my school, much of the lecture material was delivered to the entire class of 150+ at the same time, and then lab activities were divided into smaller groups doing rotating schedules with things like microscopes and anatomy lab.

Each class topic that we started a new lecture series on seemed at first like I'd seen it before. Either by way of college coursework, outside experience, or related readings, we would start in comfortable familiar territory. Within a week, however, we'd have covered all the details typically seen in a college level class that plays out over an academic quarter. After that, it was all new territory! The pace was incredible. It would be intense enough to do this with a couple of classes, but this is the pace for 4, 5, or even 6 topics at the same time! There is NO POSSIBLE WAY to absorb all of it. You just have to do the best you can. The amazing part is to push yourself that hard and find out how much farther out the "best you can" actually is compared to where you thought it was!

I really REALLY enjoyed this part of medical school. There were a lot of interesting people and the enthusiasm for academics was infectious. When I was motivated, others would ride my motivation to study and vice versa. We learned together and we partied together. There were all the usual cliques and dramas, rumors and pranks, inside jokes and public protests that happen when you cram that many people tightly together for that long. It was a lot of FUN. There was that which needed to be taken very seriously and that which clearly did not.

The second half was incredibly different! Clinical rotations are blocks of time ranging from a few weeks to a couple of months over which time a student attaches themselves to a specific team taking care of one kind of patient. In large academic medical centers there are people at a variety of training levels all working together. An "attending" is the ultimate person in charge of the team and the patient care. This is a board certified clinical practitioner of some particular medical specialty who carries an academic title or appointment and who supervises trainees. Below the attending, there are residents. Residents are doctors, having graduated medical school, and are training in that area of medical specialty. Medical students work under the residents, who work under the attending.

There is a degree of militaristic rank ordering involved. In some situations it can be fairly loose, but in others it can be intense and even brutal. Even in this day and age, there are people with some immense personality flaws who run these teams and whose personality quirks pervade the work environment, trickling down through the ranks to the bottom. Over the years, efforts have been made to curtail abuses, but this is by no means gone. For some people, there is no amount of work that is enough, no effort sufficiently meticulous, and no answer scholarly enough. You will hear horror stories of medical students suffering verbal humiliation in a public setting. This is real. However, you have to weigh it with the correct perspective. Think of it as a challenge to face and overcome rather than an obstacle to avoid. My dad always told me "No field of human endeavor has the corner on the market of assholes!" ... He was right.

During the clinical years, students tend to solidify their professional goals. Lots of different factors weigh into a decision to enter one medical specialty rather than another. How to factor it all in and come up with a plan is a very personal journey, not unlike entering medical school in the first place. There are aspects to this choice process that tend to dominate how the end of the medical school experience plays out. For those who seek to enter competitive fields, there can be a lot of work doing those extra things that one might need to do in order to stand out against the crowd. In the middle of the 4th year of medical school, there comes a period of time in which a frantic application process for residency training programs takes place. Students travel around the country interviewing at these programs. At the end, the preferences of the students and the preferences of the residency programs are sorted by a computer. On "match day" all the students are given envelopes to open in one big ceremonious moment in which they find out which program they will be going to. It's a big deal because a huge part of the rest of one's life gets delivered as a surprise!

I'm a general surgeon. I entered a competitive field after medical school and had to work uphill to get into it. Once there, I had to again compete for position in order to obtain advanced training after I was done. Now I'm an attending and specifically a clinical instructor of surgery at a surgical residency training program. I continue to work very long hours many days a week compared to a lot of people my age who went into different careers. However, the thrill has NOT worn off. I still don't feel like it's a "job". It feels like an intensive, immersive interest that I'm not only allowed to explore for myself, but that like-minded people are equally excited to join me in.

I operate with my residents and students usually 3 days a week. I see patients in a clinic setting 2 half days a week, and I do a half day of flexible endoscopy each week as well. I spend the night in the hospital doing trauma surgery once or twice a month in order to keep up my skills. I participate in developing and maintaining the surgical education curriculum, and I lecture sporadically. I always work more than 40 hours a week, but seldom more than 60. Compared to residency training, this feels like a relaxed pace - HONESTLY. It's very do-able.

I continue to dabble in many outside interests. However, unlike when I was in college, I can no longer dabble in multiple extracurricular interests at the same time. I can clear time for wife and kids without too much difficulty, but I'm too entrenched to do it with any degree of spontaneity. I keep a calendar and I stick to the plan.

I am extremely happy with the niche I've carved out. I really don't see any other mixture of life components that could thrill me the way that my life now does. I have no regrets. I see other surgeons, though, who have tried to bite off more than they can chew. They are committed to too many obligations, they have made career limiting choices that lead to chronic dissatisfaction or they may just not have figured out how to balance their lives soon enough to be able to make a difference. I don't think those kinds of errors are limited to surgeons or even physicians, however. Many career professionals in other fields suffer from the same one-sidedness.

The life-choice to become a doctor is more complex than any one can possibly describe. I didn't even have the tools to understand it until I had crossed into the field. Even now, I still continue to experience the feeling that new territories open for me to explore on a regular basis. I frequently come to the realization that I have a lot more to learn! I will forever be a student of medicine in the most humble way.

Giants in history led the way for us to do what we do now, and it is only on their shoulders that we can reach to the heights that we do. I connect myself to these amazing figures as their intellectual descendent and I cherish the heritage. If you too choose to undertake this pathway in life, expect to be challenged, elated, disappointed, broken down and rebuilt. Expect to change. Entering medicine is a transformation.

Answer 2

It's not hard like quantum physics is hard... in fact, most of it is relatively easy to understand. It is the sheer volume that is staggering. The expectations are very high as well. It's not OK to just barely pass. You really need to know what is being taught.

For me, the first 2 years were all classroom. The last two were all clinical rotations. Those are tough in a different respect. On rounds, the attending asks questions starting with the least educated person, working up the ladder until somebody knows the answer. You can feel like you know nothing. You also get to do all the "scut work" - chasing down lost xrays or lab work, drawing blood in the middle of the night and that kind of thing.

You also have to rotate through a lot of specialties (important, but painful). During my 3 month internal medicine rotation, I doubted the wisdom of the whole med school idea. I would rather poke a stick in my eye than relive those 3 months. Surgery was a little fun, but had brutal hours. I can remember literally falling asleep standing up in an OR.

I am an anesthesiologist, and I love my job. It was all worth it, but if you know too much about it before you dive in, you might never go for it.

Advice - learn all you can about anatomy and physiology, biochemistry, cell biology and genetics. You'll need that in med school. And have FUN in college, because you will never be that free again.

Answer 3

It would depend upon how smart you are, hon, if you could call it hard... If you find math --- algebra, calculus, trig, differential equations, chemistry---- hard, then do something else. Those classes in hs and college are used to sort out the average, from the really smart.

Assuming you get into med school, the first two years will tax anyone, and the second are just as bad. When you get into a residency program, all of a sudden you are supposed to be able to pull up 4 years of med school, and sort out what some guy has who is sick as hell in the ER.... You don't get much sleep, because you are on call on 24 hour shifts, for days at a time.. and the fun and games you see on TV are just a bunch of actors being silly... real medicine isn't at all like that...

Depending upon what you wish to be your primary field --- pediatrics to gerontology, it is all very hard work, and very heartbreaking as well.... people don't come to see you because they feel good, they come to see you because they are sick, sometimes terminally so... and those will break your heart, because you suddenly realize, you aren't god after all, and in the end, you really know so little, when so much is required....

In your office you have about 15 minutes to figure out what is the matter with someone, then sell that person on the fact that that is indeed what they have, and than they should indeed take this medicine.

I think the hardest job is in Family Practice or Pediatric Oncology.... Neurology isn't much better....In the first one, you are the first to see the problem, and what happens from then on, may come back to haunt you. Cancer in children is just a heart wrencher..... and in Neurology, people have what you can't cure ---spinal cord damage, ALS, Parkensons, MS and so on..... Probably the easiest is surgery, if you are talented with your hands, and get in with a good group of other surgeons........ at least your errors are evident immediately, and someone already diagnosed the problem(s) for you.

No parts of medicine are really easy..... the responsibility is frightening

Answer 4

well i'm a first year med student right now. it's definitely be a time of adjustment for me. i could cram for a few nights before a test in college and make an A. now, i cram for multiple days, and end up with a C, if i'm lucky. so the volume is definitely a challenge, but one that can be overcome if you're dedicated. the material isn't too complex, you can understand most of it if you just think about it. but you do have to think things out in order to see where details fits into the whole picture. that is what they expect from you, not just to remember a certain molecular pathway, but seeing how interfering at a certain point will lead to a series of events that eventually presents itself as a symptom you'll see in the clinic.

time management is another issue. i'm not sure about other curriculums, but i have classes from 8-12, then usually some kind of activity on most days out of the week, whether it's lab, small group meetings, or actually walking around in the hospital. afterwards, you still have to find the time to study (in addition to other things like eating, sleeping, and something enjoyable).

there's also a confidence issue. you wonder if you can really handle everything, if you can survive the entire duration of school, if you'll mess up a procedure, etc. the answer is yes, but there'll be times when its hidden behind all of the obstacles.

i'm not trying to paint a negative picture though. it's a really fun experience. i feel exicted about finally learning the information i'll use in my careering, getting a chance to interact with patients while developing my bed side manner, and just realizing how far i've come in achieving my lifelong goal.

Answer 5

Let's see, you have to graduate from high school with grades good enough to get you into a college for pre-med. Getting through pre-med program is 4 years. Then you get to apply for medical school and that will be another 4 years of training. Then after that you will need to do a residency program to specialize and that is usually at least another 4 years. You are looking at 12 years before you can really hang out your shingle and advertise that you are a doctor. Book learning will bury you and you will need to learn and memorize incredible amounts of information. They make the work so hard in your first year to see if you can stick with it and have the dedication it takes to be a doctor. Residency can see you working 36+ hour shifts with no sleep and you are expected to be at the peak of alertness? Being a doctor is a calling and a 24/7/365 one at that. Good luck.

Answer 6

Yes. 1. Get a GED. 2. Go to community college. 3. Get a high GPA in community college and transfer to a 4 year university. 4. Do good in that 4 year university (get a high GPA, aim for 3.7 or above) 5. Take the MCAT and score high on it. 6. Apply to as many med schools as you can. If you can get yourself together and get good grades from now on then you still have hope. Many people have done it this way as well, don't listen to some of the morons on here.

Answer 7

Medical School and some other careers can be hard.....it took me 14 years to be where i am now....but....don't ask yourself about how hard it's gonna be......you just have to ask yourself if at the end of the journey, no matter what it takes, you're gonna be happy doing what you're doing. If you "really" want to be a doctor (or whatever you wanna be).......go for it.

Answer 8

pangolin's answer is spot-on. thumbs up!