<p>I went to a small panel where students were talking about their experiences in med school. I noticed whenever the audience asked them questions about why they decided to be a doctor, all of them mentioned they were introduced to it by their parents or uncles or aunts. Is it still possibly to be a doctor if you don’t have any relatives that are doctors? No one in my immediate or extended family has a science-related job, and I think it would be difficult to get into the profession if I don’t already know someone who’s already done it.</p>
<p>Plenty of folks get in without medical family. You’ll be fine, just make sure that you spend plenty of time around doctors when you do volunteering and stuff, as you won’t be able to cite family related medical influences in your arguments of why you would make a good medical student. It will also allow you to find guidance and someone to talk to about medically related problems.</p>
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<p>Sounds like they didn’t do a good job of getting a diverse panel.</p>
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<p>I have no immediate family members who are physicians. That being said, most of my relatives are in the science or engineering fields, and my family has been very supportive of pursuing higher education. It’s true that if you don’t have any family members who are physicians, it’s harder to get that first taste of clinical experience, but it’s far from impossible.</p>
<p>What would worry me is if you had no support for graduate education coming from your family. Medical school and residency are very challenging, and if your family has no appreciation of the difficulties, then you’re going to find some difficulty there.</p>
<p>You shouldn’t worry about those panels too much. Lay and pre-med audiences like to ask med students about inspiration for studying medicine, but initial inspiration only can only supplement continued inner drive to a very limited extent.</p>
<p>Having family members who are in the medical field is of extremely limited value. Most parents who are physicians studied in a different era, trained in a different era, and practice in a soon to be very different era.</p>
<p>Relatives and friends can be helpful to medical students in only non-specialized ways: they can excuse your personal time sink, they can provide emotional support, and they can help you keep perspective on life as a whole. Physician relatives are likely to invoke arguments regarding their survival through more brutal times, so physician relatives in general are not inherently sympathetic.</p>
<p>Most families understand that becoming a doctor is an arduous task.</p>