Is med school right for me?

mmmcdowe
Sun, 11 Jul 2010 12:22:34 +0000

Medicine is a calling and a business. You don’t have to equally like or be equally involved in both, but you must be able to acknowledge both. I have heard a number of doctors say that they would do their job for free, and I think that is a beautiful thing that I also hope that I can maintain through my career as a physician, but ultimately at the very minimum that job requires them to charge to pay the bills and the wages of others. So I sympathize with where you are coming from, as I too feel that the practice of medicine by a physician should be a calling and a passion, because medicine is half art and one can’t practice that well without passion for it. However, this does not mean that I totally reject the idea of medicine being a business as well. It’s just something that I plan to leave mostly to those who are more interested in that part of it than I.

The fact of the matter is that you are assuming the reason why doctors see so many patients so quickly is for financial gain. In some cases, this is true. For example, some private practice surgeons focus on quick and relatively easy surgeries that compensate well. However, for the vast majority the DEMAND to be seen is what pushes for speed. I worked with my medical school preceptor in his neurology clinic this friday and we went two hours over the listed hours of clinic because of the fact that people were lined out the door to be seen on top of the regularly scheduled appointments. Several of the more agitated patients probably would have snapped if my preceptor had decided that we should see patients twice as long in order to better practice the art.