Was Medical School Worth It?

I have been meaning to write a post, or multiple posts, on this topic for awhile. It is a question I am often asked, in this form or others, ie "would you do it again," both by people close to me and in random emails I get. Before answering it I wanted to let the dust settle a bit after graduation. In pondering this I have realized that there is not a simple answer and it may indeed take me awhile to flush it all out.

But for those of you with short attention spans or who are just dying to know, here is the quick and dirty summary: I do not regret going to medical school, but I would not do it again. The summer before I started medical school a family friend, who is very brilliant and has had a very non-traditional journey through medicine, said, "medical school is something that is nice to have done." Now that I am finally done, I get it. It is hard to really put what it means into words. But if I try, in a nutshell: the training really sucks in many ways, but in the end you are a doctor and have many opportunities available to you.

Okay, if you are still reading I will try to break this whole question down a bit more and show you how I arrived at where I am today. I would venture to say that I was not the "typical premed" (although what is typical these days?) as I came to medicine a little later and did all of my science as a post-bac. I'd explored and written off some other career paths already, so I really wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting myself into. In addition to doing the volunteering, which in retrospect did expose me to some of the uglier realities of medicine at a county hospital, hospice, and in a developing country, I read books, blogs, and talked to a lot of people. This gave me a pretty good sense of the discontent a lot of physicians had with their jobs and also of the fact that medical school would be rough and frustrating at times. Overall, I wondered for awhile about whether I really wanted to put myself through all of it, and when I made the decision to go to medical school definitely entered without rose-colored glasses on.

Even so, there is still a degree of naivety that we all have when we start. I was very excited and optimistic about medicine in many respects. I looked forward to helping my patients and meeting great classmates. Additionally, I knew it would be "bad," but even that knowledge could not prepare me for the reality of how awful it was at times. There were the months of mind-numbing, tedious memorization, sleepless nights standing around in the hospital doing nothing, degrading interactions with the medical hierarchy, and all of the stress of boards, residency applications, and seemingly never-ending exams and shelf exams. I would not want to do it again.

Through all of it there were also some great times, and some of the most hilarious moments of my life. You begin to see as you move into the clinical years that there really is something for everyone in medicine. It is a very broad field and likely there is a good fit specialty, or two or three, out there for you. And even if there is not, the MD is a very respected and versatile degree that can open doors in business, research, public health, teaching, and many other non-traditional medical career paths. Once you have that realization and find your niche so to speak, the journey gets a lot better. You can see light at the end of the tunnel and it seems like the future is bright.

Of course, the grind of residency and all of the frustrations of practicing medicine in our healthcare system loom ahead. So I am feeling a sense of deja vu now as I find myself excited about starting residency and looking forward to the intellectual challenge of mastering pathology, yet feeling a sense of dread about how "bad" it will be at times. Ask me again in 4-5 years if it was worth it and hopefully I will still have no regrets.