I took a year off before going to medical school. It was less of a decision than I would have liked it to be, considering I was rejected from medical school my first time applying, but all’s well that ends well. In the meantime, I got a job working as a nurse assistant on a medical/surgical floor, and the experience provided me a very in depth look at a field I had only imagined myself getting involved in – a career I had only seen in episodes of Scrubs and Greys Anatomy as well as random, superficial stints in the hospital via volunteering and shadowing. What I would quickly come to find is that I really didn’t know what I was getting into. Here are some of the things I found most surprising. 1. Medicine is at best a dirty science. For all the davincis, google glasses, and cutting edge research that people love to think about when they think of medicine, at the end of the day there needs to be someone to wipe off the poop. For every one patient that is helped by a davinci, there are hundreds that require their bowels disimpacted, straight catheterizations, or wound and bed sore treatment. It is smelly, dirty, and wholly underappreciated, but constitutes the bulk of what it takes to treat a patient every day. 2. Being at a hospital sucks. Imagine being given salt-less hospital food every day while being constantly poked, prodded and turned around the clock, in an uncomfortable hospital bed, all in order to get some intervention that is rarely comfortable. This frequently includes drinking laxatives all day to clear one’s bowels, chemotherapy regiments, not being allowed to eat for the entire day prior to a surgery, and then having to walk around soon afterwards, despite significant pain, to prevent clots. Keep in mind that many patients are unable to take care of themselves due to old age or whatever affliction they may have. This often leaves them completely at the mercy of a busy nurse assistant in order to accomplish even the most mundane tasks such as getting up, going to the bathroom, and cleaning themselves. For certain patients, mainly those with mental disabilities, the hospital can become a prison, where they are stuck despite often having no clue why they are there. I could seriously go on but suffice to say that staying in the hospital sucks in a variety of ways that simply cannot be summed up in one run-on paragraph. 3. ‘People’ is a broader term than I ever knew. One of the things I found most surprising about getting into a hospital is how broad the term ‘people’ actually is. That guy who works the cashier at your local store, the woman who bags your groceries, the homeless man on your way home, the president of a company driving by in a Cadillac; all of these people will at one point go to a hospital. All of the invisible people that you see, but don’t think about on a given day will require being seen and thought about every day. Even the most worldly of individuals will find themselves surprised frequently. Everyone will encounter a person that is a stranger in the truest sense of the word. A schizophrenic grandma who only speaks Russian. A terminally ill patient that’s happier than most young healthy people. Morbidly obese individuals who rarely, if ever, leave their house. Honestly, it is a pretty eye opening experience, and healthcare workers have a unique and interesting vantage point with which to look at the world and the people in it. 4. People are painfully fallible. Here is the ideal situation: Patient comes in for problem, doctor diagnoses problem and prescribes treatment, patient follows treatment and lives life healthier, making sure, of course, to come back for checkups. Any medical professional reading probably smiled and shook their head a little when reading that sentence. This never happens. Despite having extremely complex brains capable of understanding beautifully intricate thoughts and concepts, people constantly find themselves slaves to basic feelings and emotions. From a logical perspective it seems ridiculous that someone with lung cancer keeps smoking, or a liver transplant patient decides to use alcohol again, or anybody decides to hit children, but it happens, and medical professionals have to deal with it. It’s very real and disillusioning to anyone involved, and continues despite everyone’s best efforts. It’s not something that anybody ever gets used to, but at the end of the day, somebody has to take care of it. As a medical professional, that will be you. 5. The end isn’t pretty. There is nothing I envy about the last days of life. Before I worked in a hospital, I thought the final days of life would be a nice little farewell where I could sit in bed all day, mull over everything I had accomplished surrounded by the warmth of friends and family. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case. Death in a hospital is often a drawn out affair that grinds on everybody involved. Feeding tubes, fecal assistance devices, chemotherapy etc. coupled with copious amounts of pain and pain medications is usually how it goes. The maxim “do no harm” is quickly replaced by “let’s do everything medically possible to keep this person alive” as everyone’s best intentions get warped into a misguided vortex of emotion and medical advice that often leads to significant suffering for everybody. The saddest part of it all is that everyone in the situation is doing what they think is best. Unfortunately, nobody thinks about death until it happens. This is a problem, because death requires a variety of tough decisions that require a considerable amount of thought. Thankfully, the field of palliative care is emerging to combat this situation. However, as of right now, the last place I would want to go is at a hospital. So anyways, considering I’m still in medical school and writing like I know everything, I’m still learning every day. I actually love the field I’m getting into because it is so complicated and raw. Nowhere else does science meet business meet law and ethics, all the while requiring constant face to face interaction with every day people in trying times. It’s definitely not for everybody, many of whom find themselves thinking about medical school. It is for those people that I hope this article can paint a somewhat clearer picture of what it’s like to live and work in a hospital. Source
Well, I can't exactly say that I totally knew all of this before being a med student, but I kinda figured, so I wasn't surprised like you say you were. Maybe you romanticized it all a little in your head?
