Is medical school really as bad as they say it is?
I have a friend who is a cardiologist and a professor at an Ivy League teaching hospital/med school. He once commented to me, "It's very hard to get into med school, but once you're in, you really have to try to flunk out." What he meant was that people who are admitted to med school are smart enough and determined enough to handle the work. And, if they can do that, they can usually handle all of the other crap and attendant problems of being med students. No professional degree program is without its horrors, which often continue after you receive your degree. I went through an Ivy League PhD program (which lasted twice as long as med school), and while I didn't have to deal with blood and guts and illness, I certainly had to deal with problematic professors and administrators, lack of sleep, and a whole variety of other issues that should have driven me right around the bend. And THEN new PhD's have to worry about finding a job in a bad market, tenure (publish or perish!), and the fact that academia pays a hell of lot less than medicine and law and business and always will. But then, academics really don't go into their fields for the money. So, the complaints of med students and residents echo many of the complaints of other students and new grads in the professions. We ALL undergo our trials by fire, and we ALL feel, sometimes, that we'd rather be doing something else. Fishing, maybe, except that life for fishermen isn't all that great either. What matters is that you love what you're doing and that you really WANT to do it. That love and desire can carry you through any amount of garbage, but rest assured: there will be a lot of garbage. However, by the time you are 21 or 22, and a near college graduate, you may well be more mature and better equipped to cope.
Is med school too hard?
Thanks for requesting my answer!Me personally I am almost at my final year! For me it has been really hard. Not so much because of the material but because you really don’t understand the sacrifices you have to make as a student.Also, life happens outside of medschool. People get sick. You get sick. Life moves forward and Med school doesn’t stop for that. I’ve had classmates who have had parents die right before an exam and they have to pull themselves together and get s*** done.Why do you think depression and suicide rates are higher in medical professionals? It’s hard and taxing. Doable yes but taxing.Before going in it’s important to know yourself and be easy on yourself throughout the journey
Why is waterboarding so torturous?
Here's Christopher Hitchens talking about his experience being waterboarded. This includes footage of the waterboarding occurring. It's worth pointing out that Hitchens was in full command of the experience unlike a real torture victim who would have no control at all.
Is medical school residency as bad as everyone makes it seem?
Bad?No.Time-intensive? Yes. We worked 80 hours a week. We arrived at 530am and left again when it was dark outside. Some times we left 30 hours later. We had a single weekend off each month. We had to get creative not to violate the 80-hour work restrictions. My older colleagues worked 100 or 120 hours a week during residency. I know some spine guys who worked 30 hours on/8 hours off…for 7 years. They deserve every single penny they make and more.In residency one of my proudest accomplishments was getting thrown out of a bar. Without having had a single drink. I was just exhausted and fell asleep.We spent more time with our fellow residents than our spouses and families. I think we understood each other better than our families ever could.After a 24-hour Friday call I would sleep a few hours and my husband and I would drive to the beach. I would swim in the bay or ocean and eventually take a nap on the sand.Every day we were expanding our skills and knowledge. Every day contained a first. There was always something exciting and dangerous happening.We regularly headed home knowing we had saved a life. It’s a powerful feeling.We celebrated with our patients experiencing the greatest moments of their lives. We grieved with the ones experiencing a nightmare. Then we came back the next day and did it all again.Truthfully, I look back on medical school and residency as a great time in my life. But no one could do it forever.You leave residency a changed person. In an emergency you go from looking around for someone to help, to realizing that everyone is looking at you. And you can.Thanks for A2A.
Why is medical school admission highly limited?
You talk about "most countries," and I can't address that, since I've only worked with students applying to US medical schools. But I can assure you that the students that I've helped gain admittance do not have nearly perfect grades. I've only worked with about a half dozen medical students, but I would say that three of them had a 3.25 overall GPA and a 3.4 GPA in the sciences, and the other three had about a 3.5 overall and a 3.6 or a little more in the sciences.Medical school is limited to people who can understand and remember a lot of science, as they must do to be good doctors. The amount of information required to be even adequate in a field is incredible.But an enduring love of medicine or concern for helping people is equally important. In the United States, a doctor is going to attend school for four to eight years after college, and will be about 30 years old before making enough money to consider life's little luxuries, like buying a house or getting married. If a person doesn't have this abiding dedication to medicine, they are not likely to make it through the long and grueling period of training. Added to this is the expense. The cost of training a doctor, even when substantially subsidized by the state or by the medical institutions, probably runs more than a half million dollars after high school. I don't know how many people attended medical school 40 years ago, so I don't know how much of a factor this is, but the increase in medical malpractice lawsuits and the much higher cost of malpractice insurance has reduced the number of people who want to attend medical school, just as the reduction in salaries for law schools (just now returning to the high numbers of legend) radically reduced the number of people applying. And medicine, like law, will not reduce its admissions standards below a certain level; you may not need a 4.0 to succeed in either subject, but you do need a degree of academic excellence to be worthy of a salary that for many people is the only reason for putting in those long and torturous hours.