Where and when does a person decide they want to become a doctor? Is it very early on in life? Do many of the children interviewed on TV that say they want to become a doctor actually go through the process, take the tests / follow through with the entire application process? In my personal experience, many people decide later on in their educational career (and even some after an extensive professional career in a non- medical field). For example of the diversity, the school I am attending has an incoming age range of 19-42. So clearly age isn’t a great indicator of why people choose medicine. But what is?
During my junior year at my undergraduate college I had the wonderful opportunity to shadow an orthopedist (a self described “mechanic of the body”). As many medical school admission officers will attest, work in the medical field – through volunteerism, shadowing, etc – is almost as important as scoring high on your MCAT when applying . After one afternoon with Dr. T, as I will call him, I quickly realized why it is so important. Dr. T introduced himself to me and quickly went into a monologue:
In my mind there are three reasons why students want to become doctors. First, their parents are doctors, or lawyers, or in other esteemed professions, and they influence –his nice way of saying force – their children into medicine. Secondly, there are students who go into medicine because it is a lucrative field. Finally, there are students who feel that medicine is their calling; there is something deep inside them that says, “I can only see myself being a doctor.”
Before this point, I had always loved science. Minus a D+ I received in fourth grade science, I had always received A’s in all of my science classes. I took physiology in eleventh grade and that’s when I knew I wanted to be a doctor. However, as I went to undergrad I quickly realized that my love of science could be fulfilled in other ways. Academic pursuits in research stimulated excitement in me. This internal feeling made me consider other career paths, mainly the Ph.D. research program. With this internal debate I decided to talk to my premedical advisor – Mrs. S. She quickly sat me down, looked at my GPA (high enough for medical school) and my extracurricular activities (again, satisfactory) and just sat there thinking. After a few minutes, she took out a piece of paper and looked at her rolodex and wrote down a name and a number. This is how I met Dr. T. Within the first week of shadowing Dr. T, I knew that medicine was the field for me. Looking back at it now, I understand why work in medicine is important in the application process. For me, it quickly established that I want to work with people.
Going back to Dr. T’s quote, I feel that I fit into the third category. It would be ignorant to break the 18,000+ applicants accepted each year into one of the three categories. Some people would be a blend of the three – and many other categories. However, in my experience, many students mostly fit into one of the categories. But is it wrong to be in one of the first two? Are you less of a doctor if you are only in it for the money? That leads us to one of the most important questions, what is a good doctor? If low death rate was the metric then family medicine doctors would all be better doctors than trauma surgeons. If low malpractice rates were how to decide, then OB/GYNs would be worse than pathologists. In my opinion, a good doctor is also a bad doctor as well as being a so-so doctor. A doctor is only as good as his/her patients think he/she is. One person’s perfect doctor could be another person’s nightmare – the type you see people complaining about on 60 minutes. However, there are certain things that all patients care about – a topic for another post.
Today, I can confidently say, “I see myself doing nothing else besides medicine.” The road was long starting all the way back with the D+ in fourth grade, through high school physiology, and my shadowing Dr. T., taking the MCAT, applying and interviewing to schools (a year long process), and eventually deciding where to go. I am blessed to have been accepted to a school where I feel that I am a perfect fit. I am one of the lucky ones. However, I am only in the middle of my education. Graduating college marks the sixteenth year of my education and I still have a lot more to go (four years of medical school and at least 4 more of post graduate work). So I truly begin my writings in the middle.
