Can someone tell me the steps to becoming a doctor?

Question

after 4 years of undergrad and 4 years of med school what happens? also do you work in a hospital while you are a med student? do you get paid as an intern?

Answer 1

In medical school, your first two years are typically in the classroom and the last two years are in clinics and hospitals (although different medical schools may do it differently.)

In medical school, you do a little bit of everything, from ER to pediatrics to OB/GYN to surgery.

After medical school, you enter your residency in which you are trained in a speciality - like internal medicine, peds, ophthalmology, surgery, dermatology, etc. The first year of your residency is called an internship and is usually mot much different than the rest of the residency. A few specialities, like anesthesia for example, may require an internship in general medicine first before entering your residency. During internship and residency, you are paid, typically $40-$50,000 a year. Given the number of hours you typically work, that often comes out to quite a bit less than minimum wage.

After residency, you can go into practice or do a fellowship to get trained in a subspeciality. For example, you do a residency in internal medicine and then a fellowship in cardiology or pulmonology. Another example is doing a residency in surgery and a fellowship in cardiothoracic surgery.

Residency are 3-6 years, and fellowships 1-4 years, depending on the specialties.

My advice - don't do it. You work very hard for many years, accumulate a lot of debt, and will graduate to a medical climate of falling salaries and increasing lawsuits. Use those 10 years you would have been slaving in medical school, residency, and fellowship to get an MBA or a JD and still have 7 years left to build your career.