In this blog, I'm fairly critical of the medical profession, medical education, and the healthcare system in general. I've mentioned before that this critical view of my own field comes from a deep-seeded optimism - I think what physicians and other medical professionals do is important, but that we can be doing a much better job by changing our attitudes and approaches. I want us to do better and through this journey so far, I've been rather dissatisfied by how poorly we often do.
Yet, despite some very real times of darkness, there's a lot I actually enjoy about medicine. I don't talk about these enjoyable aspects enough. So, this is what makes me happy about being a future physician.
1) Working with people at their lowest
Everyone goes through some hardship. Some more than others, unfortunately. It's how we handle and recover from those hardships that seems to determine how the sum of our lives turn out. I really enjoy helping people through these hardships, sometimes with drugs and procedures, but usually just with a few well-placed words of clarity and optimism. There are definitely other vocations where a person can do this, but few where these situations come up so regularly and few where you can be so comprehensive in your interventions. I realize this is a version of the cliché “I just like helping people” diatribe which I find horribly overplayed in medicine, so my bit of nuance is that I don't find as much enjoyment from treating patients who are the sickest, but rather that I gain a lot of satisfaction to talking to people who are the most scared. We don't focus on these conversations much in medicine, but they're integral to the job and I'm grateful to be able to have those talks.
2) Learning about human bodies
Medical students love studying the human body. Anatomy, physiology, pathology – interesting stuff, right? Not to me. Ok, it's interesting in its own way, but more in the way reading an encyclopedia is interesting. Plus, it’s not something you need a medical degree to learn about. Anyone can buy an anatomy textbook, read up on human physiology or delve into the various pathologies that people suffer from. What I like learning about is the massive variations – and similarities – in human bodies in real life.
Most people keep their bodies very private and grant few the privilege to see beyond what they show publicly. As a future physician, I'm granted that privilege on a regular basis as a matter of profession, by complete strangers who only know me as a medical student. Despite working in healthcare previously, it's been eye-opening to see how distorted my perception of what a typical human form looks like and how it changes as we age. In a society that places enormous emphasis on physical appearance, I find this new perspective invaluable. I'm thankful for the professional standards of my peers and predecessors, which I am also now tasked with upholding, who worked to earn this trust that now extends to me.
3) Freedom of communication
I worked in healthcare before entering medical school and one of the most frustrating aspects was that I was absolutely forbidden, by hospital policy, college regulations, and law, from providing diagnoses to patients. Even if that diagnosis was written in their chart and they weren't aware of it yet, I couldn't speak. I remember so many scared patients simply looking for an answer and I couldn't do a thing to help aside from vague reassurances. Even as a medical student, I now have more power to earnestly and openly communicate with my patients than I did as a different fully-certified healthcare professional. I find some physicians don't always respect this authority, having never had to work in medicine without it, but it's an enormous freedom. The healthcare system can be quite complex and bureaucratic, made worse by the wall of silence most non-physicians have to put up when interacting with patients. Physicians are some of the few practitioners that can cut through this bureaucracy if they are proactive and considerate. I consider this an enormous benefit to being in medicine as a profession.
4) The rare, incomparable wins
If medicine can be compared to a sport, it involves a couple of tight wins, a few catastrophic losses, and a whole lot of ties. Every once in a while, however, there are some unambiguous wins. They're not common - experiencing one once a month or means things are going pretty well. When they occur, however, they're fairly memorable. There's one moment from early in my clerkship experience that, while I can't talk about it publicly, even semi-anonymously on this blog, that I will never forget. When going through the roughest aspects of training, or of the job itself, these moments are soul-saving memories, a reminder that while most of what physicians do isn't all that consequential, sometimes can be exceedingly consequential. It's the best argument I have for pushing through all the muck in medicine.
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