Why you should not go to medical school

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/abinazir/2005/05/23/why-you-should-not-go-to-medical-school-a-gleefully-biased-rant/

by known • 15 years ago

351 173 15 years ago

blogs.law.harvard.edu

chime• 15 years ago

One could say the same for any given field from sports to programming to business to pet-sitting. It's a hard knock life for us all. None of these reasons should have stopped any decent doctor from taking the path. The single reason would be: Don't go into medical school if you care more about money and an easy-going life than the actual field and people involved. And the same applies to every single field.

seunghomattyang• 15 years ago

I agree with you to an extent but this article is especially relevant to the medical profession. There is a tremendous commitment to entering it. You must go to undergrad, medical school and residency (with standardized exams throughout) whereas for programming, there is no "traditional" path that you must follow. Moreover, although there is a tremendous reward—financial, societal and perhaps even moral—at the end, that end only comes after 8+ years of extremely hard work. Compare that with programmers, athletes and businessmen who could make millions before they turn 30. I know this number is very tiny but such a prospect is virtually impossible for any med students.

I'm not disparaging the medical profession; I actually go to a school where most students (I'm guessing about 30%) are pre-med majors. If anything, this article makes me appreciate just how much sacrifice doctors and doctors-to-be make just to help people.

hugh34• 15 years ago

I'd argue that this sort of article applies mostly to the "glamourous" professions -- things that kids want to be when they grow up, jobs that will impress your nephews. Actor, musician, doctor, certain varieties of lawyer, physicist cough, athlete, artist, airline pilot.

These sorts of professions have a ready supply of suckers wanting in, which means that the competition is tough, the work is hard and the compensation is minimal at the lowest levels. For all of these professions, the advice is the same: there are definitely some cool bits to the job if you can reach the top, but it's a really tough slog, so don't go into it unless you just can't think of anything else you want to do with your life.

But then you've got the less glamourous professions. Accountant. Actuary. System administrator. Management consultant. Less glamourous varieties of law. Pet sitting. Running a lawnmowing business. And hundreds of other occupations which don't readily spring to mind because they don't impinge much on the public consciousness, but which exist and pay well and are good jobs for folks who can't think of anything else in particular that they'd like to be doing. Since there aren't huge masses of people clamouring to become actuaries, junior actuarial positions are actually well paid and generally reasonable jobs. On the downside, your nephews won't brag to their friends about their uncle the actuary.

Figuring out where programming jobs fit into this classification is left as an exercise for the reader.

niels_olson3• 15 years ago

> One could say the same goes for any given field

Please name a sport, business, or other profession that involves staying up 40 hours straight unshowered, unfed, on a routine basis, for years, trying to not die or get anyone killed.

I can think of only two: medicine and the military. I do both. They're roughly equal. Given the choice between residency and deployment, I would need more information.

edit: Actually, I'm facing that choice now: do I apply for residency or orders which will probably involve going to Afghanistan. I'm leaning toward Afghanistan.

bootload• 15 years ago

"... Please name a sport, business, or other profession that involves staying up 40 hours straight unshowered, unfed, on a routine basis, for years, trying to not die or get anyone killed. ..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infantry

arethuza2• 15 years ago

Deep sea fishing? It certainly gets the very little sleep, unwashed and very dangerous aspects.

arn8• 15 years ago

"None of these reasons should have stopped any decent doctor from taking the path. "

Here's part of the problem. You don't know what it's like to be a doctor, until you become a doctor. I think that's somewhat unique to the field. You can go into it with the right intentions, but it's not like people doctor as a hobby or as a passion and then decide to go into it. It's not like being a musician, or a programmer, sports or pet sitting.

mechanical_fish• 15 years ago

You don't know what it's like to be a doctor, until you become a doctor. I think that's somewhat unique to the field.

No, it's like that in a lot of fields.

Obviously, many jobs have a much lower barrier to entry than "doctor" -- it takes years of work to reach the point where you can understand what doctoring is like first-hand -- but I've found most jobs fall into one of these categories:

A) The problems with the job don't always manifest until you're months or years into it, whether it's long-term boredom, lack of opportunity for advancement, chronic occupational injury, or rare but awful events. (Soldiering is a lot more fun before you're under fire than afterwards.)

B) It's not so hard to be a happy amateur, but the amateur experience is much different from the pro experience. Pros need to make money, consistently, and that is a big constraint, often to the point that it takes an entirely different skill set. (e.g. Being a freelance programmer or musician is as much about marketing and customer service as it is about code or music, and the stuff that's valuable to customers may be boring to the point of tears for you. Ask a classical musician to tell you how they feel about the inexplicably popular Pachelbel's Canon.)

C) And, of course, jobs with barriers to entry are hard to really understand until the barriers are down. Research has a whole series of barriers: Being a science major is not like being a grad student, being a grad student is not like being a postdoc, being a postdoc is not like being a junior prof.

Mind you, though you can never know what it is really like to do a job without doing it, you can interview people and get some big hints. And you'll find that medicine is actually pretty easy to research, as careers go. The OP's points are not hidden mysteries. They have been made before. There are a lot of doctors, both successful ones and burned-out ones, and they're happy to talk. The trick is to be able to listen to what they tell you, and unfortunately there are also a lot of teachers and parents who are happy to push you into medicine regardless of what the actual doctors are telling you.

techiferous• 15 years ago

"One could say the same for any given field"

Nah, it varies a lot. The nature of the work itself is different among various jobs and economic forces also create inequalities in working conditions in various industries.

I've been a programmer and a teacher. I've found being a programmer to be easy, and being a teacher to be difficult (but not as difficult as what was described in this blog post).

arn8• 15 years ago

So, surprisingly, this rant is more or less accurate, imo. (I went to med school, residency, fellowship)

I mean some things stronger than others, but it hits on the major negatives as you go through training. I know a lot of these rants tend to romanticize how hard people's own professions are in a "no one else has it this hard" type stance. We see similar "how hard it is to be a programmer" type rants as well. But, I'll pull out the one aspect that I've always felt I lost.

"3) You will spend the best years of your life as a sleep-deprived, underpaid slave."

I do feel like I missed being young (20s) and just having a regular job, enjoying life with my friends. 4 years of medical school, and 3 years of residency pretty much wipe out age 22-29. So I do regret that.

verisimilitude2• 15 years ago

I'm dental myself (waay easier than med in my opinion), but I do have friends in med. (Well, people I used to spend time with before they got socked with residency). So, I'm curious: were you _relieved_ to be able to take a different path than working as a doctor?

arn8• 15 years ago

It's the sort of thing you aren't fully aware of while you are in it. After I quit practicing, it really felt like an enormous weight had been lifted. Just due to the responsibilities involved.

People ask me if I miss it. I do not. That said, I don't want to make it sound like it was terrible. There was a fair amount of job satisfaction and rewards as well, like most things, and at the time I felt like I enjoyed it.

inportb5• 15 years ago

... pretty much. I'm doing med school now, and it's been fun. How does one balance this stuff with hackery and such? "You don't" is the answer I've been getting, but I suspect/hope that it takes some clever time management.

arn8• 15 years ago

I started MacRumors.com in my 4th year of medical school, which is a very light year. And it grew in the following years. I quit in 2008 to do it (and other sites) full time.

tryitnow• 15 years ago

I sometimes wish I had gone to medical school - now is an amazing time to be in healthcare. Technology has the potential to have a huge impact.

Here's the problem: most intelligent driven people are not going to be satisfied with "having a regular job, enjoying life, etc" Sorry, it's just not built into us. Sure, we want those things, but we also want that sense of achievement or of making a valuable contribution to something bigger than our immediate concerns (e.g. a big impact startup, saving the world, or cure someone's illness). The key to health is not losing sight of the "regular things" in life while still pursuing our ambitions.

In medicine it's sometimes hard to see the positive impact you're having. Or maybe you don't think you are having a positive impact. If that's the case then figure out what the problem is and hack it.

One thing that won't fly is pining away for a "regular life" - If you were really going to be satisfied with that you would have taken that route a long time ago.

Believe me, there are people with regular lives who are wishing they went to medical school....

arn8• 15 years ago

I up voted you, because I agree with some of your points. But I don't agree with the rest of it.

There are those, especially who visit this site, who are smart, have a lot of motivation, and want to do something great. Enterpreneurship is a hard life as well. Running a startup will suck much your life as much as residency or medical school might.

As you say though the key to health is not losing sight of the "regular things". The problem with medical school and residency is that you have little control over that. You will lose sight of the regular things. You won't be enjoying your life. And here's the big catch... you won't be changing the world, either. Being a doctor is not glamorous, if you think it is, re-read the rant because he touches on much of it.

And, very few people have an actual "passion" for medicine. I don't think I've met one person. Someone who would be doing medicine even if they didn't have to. Maybe your startup won't change the world either, but at least you might have a personal passion for it or the process.

My point is that for those with regular lives who wish they went to medical school... What's the reason? Read the rant. It's the wrong reason. (he even spells out that there is only one good reason to go into medicine)

roentgen31• 15 years ago

I had a different experience. Medical school was easy, I was single and went out drinking / partying two or three nights a week. Not to be crass, but I did well with the ladies. Luckily I can get by on four hours of sleep or less. So, I don't feel like I missed out on much of the early twenties experience. Most of my non-medical friends had jobs and I didn't, but that was the only real difference.

Things got a little more serious my intern year, but I still managed to go out twice a week, and the nurses were much more responsive to my advances now that I was doctor.

At the start of my residency I got serious with a girl from my medical school. Her training was in Psychiatry and I was in Radiology. We worked a minimum of 80 hours a week, but we always had time for each other. We got married during third year.

Now I'm a partner in a successful practice, and she's taking a few years off to raise the kids. I make over 800k a year, and take 14 weeks of vacation. I don't deal with patients. I have the ultimate job security. And, I am a tremendous resource for my family. I'm sure you know how easy it is to get screwed by the medical system. That won't happen to me or mine.

I'm not a risk taker, so what else could I be doing with the security and benefits of my current job? Lawyer, maybe.

patrickgzill• 15 years ago

Thank you for your honesty.

May I ask, what exactly do you do that you feel justifies your 800k per year? It seems to me that your career is ripe for disruption.

Cushman• 15 years ago

Lesson learned: If you do fine without sleep, and manage to wind up in the most lucrative specialty^, medicine may just be for you!

Speaking as the son of a psychiatrist who didn't marry a radiologist: you got lucky, and your wife got luckier. Good for you guys, but that's not what a student should expect from med school any more than a CS student should expect a $10mm exit.

^Barring, what, the specialized surgeries?

jpdoctor• 15 years ago

> I make over 800k a year

Does it bother you that you are profiting handsomely from sick people?

pradocchia• 15 years ago

> I make over 800k a year, and take 14 weeks of vacation.

I, for one, am disheartened by this gross misallocation of resources, but good work on the vacation time.

ender7• 15 years ago

If you are still in radiology, I'm not surprised by this. Radiology is one of the few times that you can be a doctor and expect to work something like a 9-5 day.

There are other ways to have a decently normal life as a doctor, but on average it's a pretty hard life.

zmanian• 15 years ago

I'd describe you as a possessing several traits that make you well suited for a career in medicine.

Hypomanic personality. Characterized by low need for sleep, excessive energy.

High IQ/ general intelligence.

Low tolerance for risk.

You are probably making less money than you could as entrepreneur or in finance but that's consistent with your risk tolerance.

The professional medical career path is almost ideal for you and the author of the original post would probably acknowledge this. This is probably less true for many of the individuals who are steered into medicine by the elite educational system.

steve8918• 15 years ago

In terms of job security, I heard that many hospitals are outsourcing radiology to India, ie. sending the X-rays, etc, over the internet and getting them diagnosed in India, by equally competent Indian doctors.

Is this true, and if so, do you think this might jeopardize at least radiology in the US?

jseliger2• 15 years ago

The article is also missing something vital: medicine shuts down so many options. By the time you're down, you're so indebted that residency is the only thing that makes sense. Penelope Trunk gets this: http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2011/08/30/the-best-alternativ... , but few others do.

I'm dating a newly minted resident, and she's inspired me to start my own essay and why not to be a doctor. Her, and a lot of the freshmen I teach who say they want to be doctor.

If you want to work in medicine, be a nurse instead. If you're the sort of person who'd like to see a draft, send an e-mail to seligerj [AT] gmail ((dot)) com .

BenoitEssiambre• 15 years ago

I'm married to a resident and this article is a very accurate portrayal of a resident's life. Her work schedule is insane. It's not just the amount of hours but the fact that these hours are packed and spent with difficult people and life or death situations. After a day of work she often mentions she didn't have time to eat or pee during the day. She has had some call shifts that lasted 40h strait (more than 3 days) where she got only 3 to 4 hours sleep breaks per night plus a few eating breaks here and there because it was busy the whole time. That meant no time for a shower in those three days, only superficial cleanups and quick change of scrubs when things got too bloody/amniotic.

jseliger2• 15 years ago

I'm dating a resident.

Also, anyone thinking about medicine should realize how little autonomy they have. When my girlfriend explained how residency works, I was shocked: it sounded like a circumstance ripe for an anti-trust lawsuit. Turns out it was the subject of a lawsuit: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/14/us/antitrust-lawsuit-over-... , but one that Congress and President Bush granted an anti-trust exemption. So residents can't even negotiate outside the match. The legal barriers to medicine help explain why it's so miserable.

logjam• 15 years ago

I practice, but most of this article rings true for me as well, and I think most of my colleagues would consider me pretty idealistic.

Residency training is mostly cheap labor for hospitals. Working 36 hours straight every third or fourth night (common when I was a resident) saves teaching hospitals from hiring night floats or other coverage. Trying to make any kind of important decision for another human's medical care after you've been up for 24 hours is like trying to do so after several shots of alcohol. Such a schedule does not teach efficiently, endangers patients, and stresses the mental and physical health of physicians. There have been new work rules supposedly limiting residents to 80 hour work weeks, but they are routinely ignored.

Physicians spend most of their time trying to bring order to chaos. Regardless of a physician's specialty, I daresay each was shocked to learn how much time he/she spends basically just trying to simply coax new behaviors in patients - as such, performing at some level as psychiatrists (who I respect greatly - tough work). That's the challenge; everything else is pretty much plumbing. Either you find that work interesting (and it can be) or you soon get pretty burned out dealing with humans as they are, and they are obviously at their (usually temporary) worst much of the time when they need medical care.

My own colleagues are the best people I know - I still see the driving compassion there on a daily basis, and I think that's true for the great majority of docs. On the other hand, I've met a few physicians who would be happiest in concentration camps performing medical experiments on the inmates.

mahyarm3• 15 years ago

It's ironic that it doesn't have to be this way at all. It's counter productive other than it makes someone richer. Doctors want to keep their high prices with artificial barriers such as these and the glamor keeps the supply relatively high.

inportb5• 15 years ago

Yeah, it does make the lawyers and insurance vendors richer...

(no offense intended; wealth is good!)

gonehome• 15 years ago

The long hours and over working is more a factor of a hospital trying to save money than having anything to do with supposed 'price controls' being purposefully set up by doctors. The price comes mostly as a factor of the extremely expensive education (both in cost and time) that is necessary. If you want talented people in any field, especially one with such a laboring path of entry, you have to pay them well.

jobu• 15 years ago

Some of the comments on that page are even better than the main article/rant:

"Last note, what bullshit is it that your plumber can charge whatever he wants to unclog your drain, but if I replace both knees the insurance companies automatically take 50% off the second. What am I, fucking Payless?"

_delirium• 15 years ago

That's not a great analogy. The insurance companies have negotiated a fixed rate with the hospital, and so if you work for the hospital, of course you must honor it. Same as if you were a plumber working for a large plumbing corporation, which had a contract with its clients. In that case, if you unclogged the drains at BigCorp, you would not be able to charge whatever you want, but only the rate BigCorp had negotiated with your employer.

jevinskie• 15 years ago

Was it always this bad? Was the process of becoming a doctor more sane in the past?

skrebbel3• 15 years ago

wait, so, in the US a programmer earns double what a doctor earns?

cop359• 15 years ago

I think it's implied after 8 years of experience.. Still seems a little sketch, but I think it would be on par in say the Bay Area (though the programmer would have no debt)

learc83• 15 years ago

No, not at all the average doctor's salary is more than twice the average programmers salary.

skrebbel3• 15 years ago

The article lists $45,000 per year for doctors. Programmer polls on HN showed that $100,000 is little.

What am I missing? :-)

codexon• 15 years ago

The reason why it is so hard to become a doctor is because the AMA restricts the number of applicants and schools that can create doctors so wages can remain artificially high.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/25/american-medical-associatio...

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/06/physicians-incomes-an...

michaelochurch2• 15 years ago

That post should go straight to the top.

This is also why residents have to suffer ridiculous hours. With the severe limitations on the number of people who can become doctors, the profession is characterized by an extreme workload.

It's seriously wrong. I, for one, would not want to be operated on by a surgeon who'd been working for 21 hours straight. Commercial pilots are limited to 40 flight hours per month, and what they do is a lot less complex than what doctors have to do.

pavel_lishin2• 15 years ago

So, effectively pilots are only working 1/4th of the time that I work? Or is there non-flight-time work that eats up 120 more hours a month?

yason• 15 years ago

There are commercial pilots and there are commercial pilots.

The senior staff can pretty freely pick the longest and easiest flights with the most turnover time, and thus they can enjoy eating and sleeping, and probably some shopping or exercising as well. On the other hand, if you're a young co-pilot you are likely to get the shittiest flights and the worst possible schedule, and you will probably find yourself in situations where you've flown more than your fair share of hours straight and you still have to haul one last plane home. And wake up next morning at 6am to begin a new shift.

I must say that planes have autopilot but operations don't. That might not be of much consolence, however.

shawnjan8• 15 years ago

Does anyone have any idea if this would be similar to becoming a doctor in Canada? My girlfriend is doing her undergrad and plans to do med school, I'm not sure if I should show her this article or not... If this really only pertains to becoming a doctor in the USA, then there isn't a point in shower her this. Any advice/info is appreciated :)

Confusion• 15 years ago

There is not a doubt in my mind that this schedule ensures that they learn less and perform their jobs in much worse ways than compared to when they would be able to get more sleep and less stress. There's zounds of experiments that back me up on this.

As far people saying it's cheap labor: when residents make mistakes and the hospital gets sued, the labor suddenly isn't so cheap anymore. Again, there is not a doubt in my mind that this practice leads to a lot of damage and death, with the associated financial fallout.

That hospital management doesn't try to change this shows how blind they are to the consequences of entrenched practices. I wonder whether the health care market could be disrupted merely by creating hospitals that actually try to get their employees to perform optimally.

carbocation5• 15 years ago

So I owe HN a blog post. Here is something of a stopgap.

I am (still) a medical student at Johns Hopkins, and I love the place very much. I have for the past 6+ years.

After my third year, essentially on a whim (my sponsor, I think, knows this) I pursued a research fellowship in cardiovascular genetics. I loved it a lot, and stayed on a second year (spontaneously; thank you, Stanley and Lola J. Sarnoff).

After my fifth year in medical school, my second year of CV genetics up at MGH and the Broad Institute, I got the opportunity to pursue the startup dream for a year. I'm midway through and absolutely loving it.

But yet, I miss medicine. And I think that the grass is always greener, so I think I will miss whatever I'm not doing. Next year, in medical school for the first time in three years, I will miss research. Or I will miss the startup life. Something. I know it, because right now, I miss the hospital.

I miss working 80 hours a week while paying $50,000 a year for the privilege. I miss having a best answer (and if you think there are better answers in software than there are in medicine, please email me so I can hire you).

But I know that soon, I will miss the freedom of working at a startup. There is no right answer for everyone. And for many of us who were drawn to medicine, I think there can be no possible right answer, ever.

grey666• 15 years ago

We all hate people. It's because people have no common sense anymore. People don't respect the Earth anymore. It's all about greed... and greed is and has always been the seed of all Evil. Combine greed with a constant influx of media and interruption, you get zombies.

It's never going to change. We are left here on this lonely planet to our own devices - we were warned about greed, but greed has in fact taken over.

The 90's saw the most productive and the most lucrative period in the history of mankind. We take it for granted. The truth is - to live in the USA during the 90's was the pinnacle of human civilization and it will never be that way again. It was unsustainable.

We are in a death spiral, there will be casualties. Those that cannot adapt will be sacrificed. Gasoline has been replaced by the Internet and global marketing. Gasoline is obsolete.

Gasoline is obsolete. Because it's cheaper to hire foreign workers via the Internet than it is to make cubicles in the USA.

ofca• 15 years ago

They should be treated as Flight controllors. My friend is one and ,it being a high-risk job like being a doctor, they have 8hr workdays with 2 hours of working and 2 hours of resting, and their salaries are sky-high. So sad all those smart,kind and hard-working people are being so used.

(plus, so glad I didn't end up in med school, I almost did :)

mattm• 15 years ago

Do you know how they settled on the 2 hours on/2 hours off deal? I'm interested in alternative working hours to improve productivity and would be interested in knowing more about their schedules.

mrrres• 15 years ago

Married to a final year surgery resident and unfortunately this article rings very true. I'm not sure if the profession changed at some point, but if we were advising my kid now on future professions, doctor would not be on that list. I remember the idealism that my wife went into the profession with and that is completely gone now. I find that very sad.

jsavimbi• 15 years ago

> You should become a doc because you always wanted to work for Medecins Sans Frontières and your life will be half-lived without that.

Everything else was just whiny bullshit.

adrianwaj5• 15 years ago

Great article and on point.

A former flatmate of mine committed suicide about 1.5 years after I left the flat, which I did due to his erratic and hostile behavior toward me, which I think was due to a number of factors, but mainly his stress from an intense hospital residency while he also did further study simultaneously.

There's an article mentioning him here: http://vitualis.files.wordpress.com/2006/09/action_vow.pdf

The danger zone for med students is when they sacrifice themselves and tolerate all the reasons that the Harvard article states why not to go to med school, because of the idealistic notion that:

"You have only ever envisioned yourself as a doctor and can only derive professional fulfillment in life by taking care of sick people."

As such, these smart and ambitious med students shoot for the moon, and due to the reasons in the article, realize that they won't make the moon (ie earn that fellowship, obtain that degree, receive that certification, get that promotion) and then they feel that their life is a failure, or won't have any further meaning the way they wanted it to, and then they kill themselves, because they have no exit strategy (or plan B) and are ill themselves.

There's nothing noble about the suicide of med students and interns, but I've seen how it happens right up close. I have further thoughts on the matter but that's the core of my experience regarding the negatives of this career path.

MrVitaliy• 15 years ago

What would be the picture of perfect 22-29 span? Being born with a silver spoon in a mouth? Partying every day?

I'm a CS grad student, married to med student. While our schedules are different, there isn't much difference in time. I'm mostly occupied with reading papers, grading papers, doing homework, grading homework and generally providing very cheap labor in a form of research assistantship and teaching assistantship to university.

To me, the experience of every point the author mentions is the sole reason for existence between 20-30 years of age.

boas• 15 years ago

I personally have been very happy with my decision to go into medicine (specifically, interventional radiology). I have a few comments about this discussion:

1. The average radiologist gets paid about $40 (after expenses) to read a CT scan. So you have to read a LOT of scans to make as much as roentgen. Many scans contain hundreds of images, and the diagnosis can depend on just a few pixels. Partly based on the radiologist's diagnosis, the patient may need to go to surgery (at least $25,000) or need another round of chemotherapy ($50,000), etc. When viewed in this context, I think $40 is a great value for getting an expert opinion. (As a side note, there is a lot of regional variation in salaries. They are probably lowest in New York City. Contrast that to law or finance, where the highest salaries are probably in New York City. I think the difference is due to the fact that medicine (even radiology) is practiced locally, and thus depends on local supply and demand, and does not have the kind of network effects that you see in law or finance.)

2. In terms of disruptive technologies in radiology, I don't think that computers will be able to replace radiologists any time soon, but there are lots of ways that computers could help radiologists be more productive or accurate. Much of the advances in consumer technology from the past decade are not yet available in radiology. Images are usually transferred to another hospital by mailing a CD. Reports are transferred using a fax machine. We're lucky if we can get 10 frames per second when scrolling through a large study. Computer systems are not linked -- ie, we have to type the patient's name into both the radiology system and the medical records system. For various reasons, many of these problems will have to be solved by big companies and not startups. But there are other opportunities for startups. If you're interested, check out my startup http://www.revisionrads.com.

djacobs• 15 years ago

Well said.

After four years of gearing up to go to medical school, I dropped that goal and went into software engineering. I wrote about this choice pretty extensively, as it was not an excruciating decision [0]. In spite of how much I really wanted med school, I also wanted a life. I tried to maintain a life while applying to med school, full of all the hobbies that make my life fun, but balancing those two wasn't actually possible. So I chose to reclaim my life.

Reading this piece is refreshing--I haven't seen enough people talk about the trade-offs of a physician. A lot of people in software think "I would have a meaningful life if I were in medicine"--and they probably have the smarts to be in medicine--but I think we should combat the idea that moving in that direction makes for a life that's any more fulfilling than engineering.

[0] http://wit.io/posts/pivot-my-journey-from-medicine-into-tech...

kingkawn2• 15 years ago

I started the med school track late in life (27 when I started taking premed classes), and while I haven't finished, I have to say that all of the complaining I hear from fellow students and doctors is ridiculous. All careers take up lots of your life. All careers end up dominating your social circles. All careers leave you feeling underpaid, including the people I know in finance who makes tons of money and work 12 hours a day 7 days a week minimum. Life is hard. I'm glad I took a lot of my 20's to experience that in other ways, so now that I've come to the medicine path, it really feels great. I agree that the decision to do this is not one that an 18 year old starting undergrad should make. But nonetheless, medicine is no worse than anything else.

DTrejo• 15 years ago

Did you read the article?

kingkawn2• 15 years ago

No of course not I'm studying to be a doctor.

shabble3• 15 years ago

As a complete aside, the Piecework article by Atul Gawande linked from the story has now been archived, and they broke the original URL.

Working version at http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/04/04/050404fa_fact

daylast• 15 years ago

The most telling part of this article is point #8 (which basically says you will end up blaming and then eventually disliking the patients for your sad lot as a modern day doctor). What I find amusing here (and so comically characteristic of a Doctor's absurd notion of self-importance) is that the author so completely lacks the capacity for self-introspection that he doesn't even realize the truth of who is to blame.

To all the doctors out there that feel the same way as this author does I have one message for you. The only person to fucking blame is YOU!!!

Guess what? You're the one who made the decision to go into medicine and so you're the person at fault for the sad state of affairs in the modern medical profession. It's your fault for failing to do your due diligence on the demands and rewards of the profession. Why didn't you do your due diligence? You probably had some romantic notion of what it would be like as a Doc. Or possibly you went into medicine to make your parents happy? Or you thought it was a respected profession, or you simply wanted to help folks in need because it's an altruistic pursuit.

Well, sorry buddy, but all those things aren't an excuse for not doing your due diligence. It get's worse though...

At the macro level it's a self-reinforcing cycle. The lack of due diligence happens so frequently and by so many aspiring docs, it has repercussions on the profession as a whole. At the aggregate level, it causes wages to fall and working conditions to get worse for docs and interns (since the demand for medical school entrance remains strong regardless of conditions or wages).

You think just because you got good grades and got into med school that makes you smart? Ummm...no. And that is why Doctors get paid less than - and have more difficult working conditions than - Investment bankers. The type of person who goes into I-banking is smart enough and introspective enough to do their due diligence. The type of person who goes into medicine isn't.

Why you should not go to medical school

Related Stories