Once upon a time, I was a chemistry major. When someone asked what my major was I shrugged and sourly responded, “…chemistry.” Eventually, (I’m sure to your surprise), I realized chemistry wasn’t for me. It looked like everyone in the department, students and professors alike, was unhappy with where they were, and that’s not what I wanted, as fascinating as the science could sometimes be. So, I switched. I reflected my opinion on the negativity I saw. Was that a mistake? Recently, browsing through medical blogs and web commentary by doctors, I noticed similar negativity in physicians and that they, who seemed to hate what they do, felt like the overwhelming majority. As a pre-med, not even in medical school yet, I suddenly doubted myself more than I ever have in my entire life before. The more I read these posts about how insurance and healthcare policy in America are ruining medicine and about how people hate doctors and just want to squeeze every penny out of their physicians with malpractice suits, the more depressed I got. Were these blogging doctors really representative of everyone who survived medical school and residency? If they hated their jobs so much why didn’t they do something else? Did it really take them until they were full doctors to realize all the horror of it? Was I going down the wrong path? Was I delusional that anyone liked medicine? I couldn’t answer their questions but I could answer mine. No I’m not delusional. You love medicine for a reason. Everyone has their own reason. The reality of any job is that there will always be a lot of negatives. For many, the negatives of medicine are so great that they outweigh the positives. But those positives still do exist however rare they may seem. So maybe, I wasn’t seeing the whole picture. This phenomenon I picked up on I like to call, The Yelp Effect. When searching for a restaurant, you may often look at a Yelp review. Generally, I’ve noticed that these may not always be very accurate or representative. I’ve been to restaurants with fantastic Yelp reviews that were closer to fantastically mediocre and I’ve been restaurants that have zero Yelp reviews that might just be the greatest places I’ve ever eaten at. Why is this? People go online not to give representative reviews. No one has a really “representative” experience. However, the only people making these Yelp reviews are those who want to elaborate the best or the worst experiences and unfortunately rarely anything in between. The same concept applies to all sorts of reviews from Amazon and even to doctors writing about their experiences online. It seems people resort to blogs and forums to complain, brag, or celebrate… although the latter is rather less common amongst Yelpers and doctors. It’s not that these reviews aren’t accurate. I’m sure they all are in some way or another. But they’re not representative of a restaurant or a whole field, no matter how many reviews there may be. After making this realization, I thought to myself, ‘Why am I going to let myself be influenced by the angry Yelp doctors?’ Those are not the experiences I’ve had so far although I’ve definitely had a decent share of “[expletive]… this field is terrifying” moments, sometimes even just in terms of how much there really is to learn… especially considering I’m only halfway through my undergraduate career. But here’s the big difference between why leaving chemistry was right but leaving medicine would be wrong: I saw and experienced life as a chemistry major meanwhile I only read about life as a doctor. Sometimes, seeing unhappy people should wisen us up to the realities of a particular field. For me, that was chemistry. But I both saw and experienced this. After my realization, I discovered the Biological Physics department and felt right at home. People actually seemed to enjoy where they were and that made all the difference. For medicine, I had to realize that I was reading other people’s experiences, not having my own. I’ve had some amazing preliminary experiences with medicine from volunteering to being an EMT to shadowing a doctor and these always overpower the less favorable experiences like being woken up at 4am on a school night by an EMS tone. I know I have a lot to learn. That’s a gross understatement, I know. I’m not a doctor, I’m not even a medical student yet. But there must be some way to help people without become a cynical Yelp doctor, right? At the end of the day, I can’t depend on the Yelp doctors anymore. If you hated every fiber of your job as strongly as you appear to, I’d like to think you would leave. It’s a terrifying prospect given the exorbitant amount of time, money, and dedication it requires to be a doctor, but it’s not impossible. And who knows why you’re writing all these comments? Maybe you’re writing for sympathy, maybe you want to educate the world about the plight of doctors or American healthcare, or maybe (like several physicians I’ve met and told me face on) you sincerely want to discourage young students from ever becoming physicians. Motives aside, I believe we all ought to read internet comments from doctors or Yelpers and take it with a grain of salt. The human tendency to believe ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’ is incredibly powerful and internet forums seem to exacerbate this issue. There are a lot of issues with modern medicine that make this profession less desirable than most doe-eyed dreamy pre-meds realize. But acknowledging that no career will be perfect and that we have been given the chance to change someone’s life, should come before blindly believing the Yelpers of the world. Maybe, doctors will read this and brush me off as another cliche and naive pre-med. They’ll think, this kid doesn’t have the experience I do, and they’re right, I don’t. Maybe I should be considering your discouragement and the fact that just over 50% of doctors said they would go into medicine if they had to do it all over again a little more seriously. Maybe I’ll end up leaving medicine because I couldn’t handle the pressure that leads so many physicians to suicide that the rate of suicide for female physicians is double that for normal females. But then, at least I would know that I tried. I went into something because I loved it and I gave it my all. I didn’t quit before I’d even started. So here’s the thing. I read depressing pieces and comments like this one, about a doctor who was able to ‘escape medicine’, and think, what if I went into research or became a singer or opened my own bakery? But as much as I love all of those things, at the end of the day, I just couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else. What lies ahead is absolutely terrifying, but I will not let this fear of the unknown dissuade me from utilizing my passion and personality to help others in the best way I know how. Source
