A discussion about med school means an obligatory reference to Scrubs. (Let’s pretend season 9 never happened). If you’ve seen the show, you know J.D. went through a lot – he found the love of his life, his best friend, his mentor and learned hard lessons about life and death that eventually sparked some introspection before the 22 minutes were up. And if you haven’t seen the show, that’s sort of the life one leads in the field of healthcare (minus all the day dreaming and the mind game playing Janitor).
1. Competition is good, being helpful is better
There’s no denying it – med school is more competitive than the Olympic 100m sprint. You will constantly be compared to and academically ranked against your fellow medical students. But it’s not all about that end grade. Learning medicine is about being able to competently practice it, which in the real world (much like Scrubs) means that you will be working with a whole team of various doctors and nurses to take care of just one patient.
So even though you’ve got to look out for yourself, helping a struggling peer to understand a concept could make for a happier working life when they become a future colleague.
2. Med school doesn’t take forever
It doesn’t have to. All medical education does not take 11 years to complete. There are literally hundreds of medical jobs available in healthcare, some of which require a mere 10 months of training. These healthcare careers include job titles like registered nurse, dental hygienist, physician’s assistant and medical assistant and they can be achieved through career training institutes like Porter and Chester. You don’t have to go through 11 years of schooling to qualify as a ‘med student.’
3. It’s not about the money
Healthcare may be one of the America’s largest industries but a majority of medical professionals are overworked and understaffed. Add the pressure of dealing with disease, death and distress and you have an occupation even Mary Poppins would need more than one spoonful of sugar to survive in. The icing on the cake? Full on med school will leave you thousands of $$$$ in debt.
The money doctors and nurses make doesn’t make up for their 24/7 jobs. They stay in the field because they love something about it – whether it’s interacting with patients, healing people or a fascination with the science.
4. You can have a social life
Yes, you’ll spend almost every weekend surrounded by textbooks, diagrams of spleens and cadavers. But that doesn’t mean you can’t set out time to grab a beer with your friends or go on a (short) road trip. The key is to prioritize and organize. If you’re up to date with studies, you’ll have better options to spend your free time on.
5. You’ll be surrounded by remarkable people
Your peers, colleagues and teachers will be intimidating. All of them (and you) will have impressive accomplishments – volunteering at clinics, amazing grades, published research papers and way, way more. They will be what makes med school competitive, but they are also going to be your closest friends. After all, you’ll be spending quite a lot of time with them.
6. You’ll have to make sacrifices
Medicine is a huge subject and to cover it you have to spend hours studying to keep up with your classes. This mean that while your non med school friends are off partying and enjoying long weekends, you’ll have to choose to stay in with your cat, a 10 lb. textbook and a highlighter. And if you don’t, well good luck on that exam because you’re going to need it.
7. You can’t BS your way through
Med school is not high school. You can’t procrastinate and write that book report the night before. You can’t just fill in all the “B” circles on your Scantron sheet and hope for the best. You are studying medicine – your knowledge (or lack thereof) is going to be the difference between a recovering patient and a corpse. So you’ve got to hit the books.
Yeah, the life of a med student is stressful, competitive, expensive and limits free time. But the end goal is what matters – to learn the science of the human body, to champion healthy living and to be the difference between life and death.