Medicine is not for everyone. Ego aside, you have to ask yourself why you want to attend medical school. After serving on the admission board for medical school and internal medicine residency, it is hard to believe that many people go into medicine for the wrong reasons. With the current shift in our healthcare system, unless you are passionate about helping others, it may be a wrong decision for you to attend medical school. Here are five reasons why you should not go to medical school.
1. A medical career does not make you rich.
According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, about 74% of medical school graduates carry some form of debt, and the average debt of graduating medical students is about 200,000 US dollars. After graduation, you then enter residency training, ranging from 3 years to upward of 7-9 years. During residency, you are making an average salary of 50k to 70k with an average 80-hour workweek, depending on the area you live in and your class ranking. For example, as an internal medicine resident, you make about 56k per year as a post-graduate year one and about 58k as a post-graduate year 3. For my residency training program, a PGY-1 works an average of 60 to 80 hours per week, and we can cover several hospitals during the week. We are not compensated well with the amount of time we dedicate to our patient care. On the contrary, if you choose a profession that begins after college, such as engineering and computer science, you can start the field with an average salary of 80-100k per year. If you know how to invest your money, you can retire much earlier than your physician counterpart.
This book will teach you everything about finance:https://amzn.to/3FqmPGj
2. It takes a lot of time until you can practice independently.
As I mentioned before, it takes a lot of time and resources to train a competent physician. A general practitioner will at least attend four to five years of undergraduate studies, four years of medical school, and two to three years of residency training. It is not a small commitment! Most residency programs will take three to four years, with some specialties like neurosurgery can take upward of seven years! While you are in training, you will be overworked and not compensated well. If you are not passionate about medicine and lifelong learning, the training period can be challenging for your mental and physical health. It is no wonder most residency training programs are now emphasizing resident wellness as the trainee suicide rate is climbing steadily.
This book will teach you how to be an effective leader: https://amzn.to/3P7sLbG
3. The job market is not stable. There is a substantial supply-demand mismatch.
You heard it. The physician job market is not stable, contrary to popular beliefs. There is an enormous mismatch between supply and demand in our healthcare system. On the one hand, we strategically place a lot of tax dollars into creating medical schools to fill the gap of our physician shortage. On the other, we limit the increase of the total number of residency training in our country. This places a strain on our healthcare system by creating trainees with nowhere to practice and discourages many of our graduates from pursuing studies such as general Internal Medicine or primary care. With the majority of graduates seeking fellowship and subspecialty training, it is no wonder that we have such a shortage of primary care physicians.
Learn how to invest with this book: https://amzn.to/3vSsxOj
4. We are losing autonomy because of our healthcare system.
Most people do not realize how limited they are in practicing medicine until they work in the field. We, as physicians, have lost a great deal of autonomy in the way that we practice in the name of quality improvement and insurance coverage. Now I am not dissuading the need to improve, but many administrators focus on how we “code” things (namely the ICD10 codes) and the way we describe something on the medical chart. The current healthcare model does not aim to improve healthcare but rather to maximize the healthcare dollar we can charge to patients. If you have been practicing medicine, you know what I am talking about. People going into medicine have no clue until they are too deep in the rabbit hole.
5. You sacrifice everything to become a physician.
Last but not least, you sacrifice many things to become a physician. We spend at least two decades of our lives preparing for this profession. In our twenties, we spent countless hours studying for the pre-medical courses, MCAT entrance exam, and now the USMLE exams during medical school. We then prepare ourselves to take the board exam for the specialty we choose and then have to renew our board certification every five to ten years. We give up our time that could be spent with family and friends or doing what we enjoy. In our career, we continue by working over sixty to eighty hours a week, with very little time for our parents, loved ones, and even our patients.
Learn to dream big: https://amzn.to/3ylV0h1
My goal is not to deter you from my profession but to provide a unique perspective of our healthcare system. If you love lifelong learning, providing care to the underserved, and leadership development, medicine is for you! But it is not a light commitment, and it requires a tremendous amount of dedication.