Was medicine the profession you wanted to be in?
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Careers
Was medicine the profession you wanted to be in?
Discuss training, careers, and education
What made you choose medical profession? was it the passion? or the parental pressure?... the status? or coz it was cool to and simultaneousely earn a handsome amount??? how many of us really wanted t
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Was medicine the profession you wanted to be in?
posted at 5/4/2011 4:08 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 9
First: 14/8/2010 Last: 1/5/2012 |
What made you choose medical profession? was it the passion? or the parental pressure?... the status? or coz it was cool to and simultaneousely earn a handsome amount??? how many of us really wanted to be in this??? |
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Re: Was medicine the profession you wanted to be in?
posted at 6/4/2011 11:20 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 83
First: 20/5/2010 Last: 1/4/2013 |
The thing attracted me to medicine was the idea that medicine blended together the two of my greatest passions: science and sociality. I wanted to train so I could practice as a doctor, bringing healing to others by being both physician and friend. In this profession I felt I could make a real and lasting difference to people's lives, I could give reasurance and recipes, council and cures. For me it was about healing both body and soul. However, after my 2nd year as an undergraduate I began to feel disillusioned and disheartened with my profession. On GP placements I saw doctors who barely had 5 minutes with each patient due to the ridiculously high demand for appointments. On hospital wards I saw doctors, pressured for time, rushing around ward rounds with no time to make conversation with the sick patients who lay in each bed. All patients ever seemed to be doing was waiting for doctors for hours on end, only to find that they flashed past so fast they could barely remember half of what they said. Was my romantic view of medicine naive? Was this really what real medicine was like? Had I been deluded for the years I dreamed of being a doctor? If this is medicine do I even want in? It seemed the whole system was geared up so that doctors didn't have enough time to trully connect with patients on a social level or give any TLC. I decided I needed a year out to get my head straight. I intercalated to ensure I would have a degree should I drop out. During this year I came across a book called "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer" by Siddhartha Mukherjee, a cancer physician, researcher, and professor of medicine at Columbia University. The book, which I'm still reading, outlined the history of cancer from when it was first recorded up to the modern day. This was interspersed with emotional real-life stories of some of Mukherjee's patient's battles with the disease. My passion for medicine slowly re-awoke page by page. Here, it appeared, was a specialty which as well as being scientifically stimulating lent itself to high patient contact. After all, a cancer physician can hardly run off after delivering a diagnosis of cancer. Further reading, revealed that some specialties did indeed involve higher patient contact (book: So You Want to Be a Brain Surgeon), Medical and Clinical Oncology were among those listed. I realise now that I can choose a specialty that lives out my passion; which I guess is what all med students should do. I'm thinking I may be a Clinical Oncologist. I won't be dropping out. |
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Re: Was medicine the profession you wanted to be in?
posted at 6/5/2011 11:48 AM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 3
First: 6/5/2011 Last: 19/5/2011 |
i think its not different always.., my mother is a nurse in a public hospital. i used to see her helping people in different kind of situations. sometimes it was so hard but she just kept on doing what she did. the only thing that i she always used to say was, she is doing it to help people. and not for the salary she was getting since its a very little amount of money here in Tanzania. I always wanted to be good to people. I wanted the community to 'love' me. so i told myself that i'll go ahead and become a doctor, a well respected professional in here. my late young brother had the same ambition even before me.., then after he passed away, i took it very serious. and ofcorse i love it. |
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Re: Was medicine the profession you wanted to be in?
posted at 6/5/2011 12:36 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 1
First: 6/5/2011 Last: 6/5/2011 |
As a Doctor working in a developing country ,be a doctor is wonderful thing I have done.it is very exiting to do something for the poor population,to help them to go out of their illness et their health problems. Imagine one moment when you give vaccinations for child in school and you see them growing without eruptives fever virus,without tetanus and tuberculosis and so far. Helping mothers how they can takes care of child.giving conseils for eating healthy,...... I hope that young generation chooses to be doctor especially in developping countries.stopping some diseases may help WHO to give more for the emergent and reemergent diseases, smooking cessation ,reducing alcohol comsumptoin and takes care about mental illness and cancer. |
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Re: Was medicine the profession you wanted to be in?
posted at 6/5/2011 1:51 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 70
First: 15/8/2009 Last: 10/4/2012 |
In Response to Re: Was medicine the profession you wanted to be in?: The distance between medicine as medical students hoped it would be and medicine as practiced "professionally" today was a subject Sarah Jones and I talked about. We used blogs from Doc2Doc to think seriously about issues of burnout and the distance between the realities of contemporary practice and the hopes that medical students first brought to the practice. The article "The ethical professional as endangered person" was published in J. Med. Ethics 2010 36: 371-374. Responses to me, as first author, were strong. The real message is we have created a system in which the best inclinations of doctors, the things that bring them to medicine, seem to be stymied in the teaching and in the foundation years of early practice. This can be changed and must be changed if we are not to continue to loose young physicians, dissilusioned in their early years of practice. |
