“So, is it worth it?” A fellow airplane passenger asked me this after stealing glances at my Macbook screen and realizing I was in medical school. He was debating whether or not to apply and admitted that he already had many doubts. Though he was a tentative pre-med and had not yet taken his MCAT, the question resonated with me and I’m sure, many individuals at various stages in their medical training. I had thought about this many times throughout my schooling, during all-nighters in which I’d study dozens of origin and insertion flashcards to prepare for an anatomy practical or while staring at my interns typing SOAP notes and wondering why I was still at the hospital for the 15th hour. The answer I’d come up with? It depends on why you go. First, you don’t do it for the money. Being a doctor just isn’t as lucrative as you may think (see: $1 million dollar mistake). While a medical education will likely afford someone with a 6-figure annual salary, it comes at a price. The average medical school debt for 2013 graduates was just under $170k and that’s not including the potential undergraduate or post-baccalaureate loans. In addition to the bottom line, one also has to consider opportunity costs associated with going to medical school. Many spend the majority of their 20s either preparing for or being in medical school, and will see the last of those years while in residency. Meanwhile, Facebook tells them that college friends are having children, starting to acquire mortgages, have real incomes, and vacationing with their families as they sit behind a desk for the twentieth year of their lives. You don’t do it for prestige or respect. Trust me, there is no respect in “getting” to disimpact someone’s bowels because you’re the lowest person on the totem pole, being yelled at for failing to write your name on the OR whiteboard as you are obviously approaching it with a marker in hand, or being reminded that even the Keurig in the lounge has more of an important function than you as a medical student. Sure, people may someday look up to you as a role model and turn to you for advice, but that day is probably years away and even in residency or fellowship, you will still be made to feel like a minion. You don’t go to medical school for your parents or anyone else. If the decision to pursue your studies is not your own and you are living out someone else’s dream or simply just perpetuating a long-line of cardiothoracic surgeons, you will be unhappy. You will get to know exhaustion very well during your 4 years of training. Those 30-hour calls on surgery or OB, trying to keep your eyes open on morning rounds with your team, and weeks of memorization of different groups of bacteria for Step I can bring you close to your breaking point. What prevents you from tipping over is a genuine desire to be there. So, why do you go to medical school? For your patients and the relationships you will have with them. The white coat has this amazing ability, even short ones, to reveal vulnerability in human beings. Within the first few minutes of meeting someone, they can divulge STD concerns, admit to having suicidal thoughts, or plea for you to save them, as they straddle the brink of death. The trust and faith your patients have in you, because you are their medical provider and even as they’ve barely met you in the emergency department, could in any other setting take a lifetime to attain. It is this trust that has them bringing family members to specifically see you and why they return year after year. The ability to prove that the trust is warranted and be able to share such intimate glimpses of people’s lives, as trite as it sounds, really is a privilege. You go to medical school because you’re the type of person who likes to be pushed. And you will be… in ways expected and unexpected. It’s not all that surprising that medical students are sleep-deprived or are on the wards so long they don’t get to see any sunlight for several days in a row. But, medical school also exposes you to devastation and sometimes feels like it’s literally tugging on the C fibers of your heart. It can be quite difficult to tell the parents of a 6 month old child with Tay-Sachs that they probably won’t get to celebrate their son’s 5th birthday or meet the spouse of a newly-diagnosed HIV-positive individual, whose seroconversion resulted from an extramarital tryst. As tough as these experiences may be, you realize it takes a certain type of person to willingly walk into these situations every day. You realize you CAN and you do so with kindness. Finally, you go to medical school because you just can’t possibly see yourself doing anything else. Sure, staying up all night studying the Kreb’s Cycle for what seems to be the millionth time in your life and holding an Army-Navy retractor for 8 hours in a contortionist position aren’t exactly the things you dream about when you think of being a doctor, but the alternative life of working in a cubicle, sitting behind a desk, at a laboratory bench, or anything else really for the rest of your days is just unfathomable. You realize that it’s hard work, a long commitment, may not have the amazing payout you initially anticipated, and have no idea what the future will hold with the Affordable Care Act, but thinking of a life without medicine just seems so empty. So, to answer my Southwest, middle-seat neighbor’s question: It’s a yes. Absolutely. It’s not about the money and it’s not about prestige. It’s because the joy I have when I get to meet a new patient, even at 3:00 in the morning, and be able to discuss the physiology I love so much with them, brings me a happiness I can’t even describe. If I had the choice, I’d do it again. Source
