As A Medical Student, Did You Ever Doubt You Could Become A Doctor? Why?

This question was originally posted on Quora.com and was answered by Vivienne Marcus, got a medical degree once.



Yes.

One day I was walking past a homeless man in the street. Shabby clothes. Head downcast. Paper cup on the ground to collect donations.

He asked me for a donation: “Got any spare change?” I just shook my head and walked on. He called after me: “Oi! Medical student! Got any spare change?”

I stopped dead. I went back to him. How did he know I was a medical student? He said he recognised the scarf I was wearing, which had the colours of the medical faculty. But how, I wanted to know, did he recognise them? His answer chilled me: “Because I used to be a medical student”.

Aghast, I asked: what happened to you?

And he half-smiled. “I failed all my exams and they threw me out.”

I was horrified. I knew how hard it was to get into medical school. I knew how hard it was to stay in: tough, demanding. Some students definitely could not handle the pace, and a few in my year had dropped out. But they had brains and talent: surely they would prosper somewhere else? How far would they have to fall to end up begging on the streets? Was there something else in this young man’s case? Drugs? Crime? Gambling debt? I never knew.

Meeting him that one time (to my knowledge, I never saw him again) made the prospect of failure very real.

Even before this encounter, I had some doubts. I knew how difficult and stressful medicine appeared. In first year Anatomy classes, we saw the gorgeous paintings by Frank H. Netter, who always signed his name with MD to reflect that he actually was a doctor, as well as an artist.

Netter practised medicine only very briefly before becoming more famous and successful as a medical illustrator.

I found myself contemplating whether there was some field I could enter with my medical degree, and achieve success and recognition but without all the stress of doctoring. I could pretend that I hadn’t run away from clinical medicine (though this was my true motivation) and instead chosen a different path for more positive reasons. But ultimately I did go into clinical medicine, and I am glad I did: it was plainly the right decision.

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