11-14-2017, 10:44 PM
Well, I think the first thing you need to do is remove the "ifs" and "on the fences". The medical climate in the USA isn't for the undecided. If you can, talk to some different doctors in certain areas of medicine you think you want to go into and get some incite into what it's like being a doctor today.
Medicine isn't all "helping people" these days as much as it is treating a warm body the way insurance companies want you to treat them, regardless of how asinine it may be. I'm not saying doctors don't have freedom, but not as much as you might think. I've had plenty of my doctors leave the field and go into teaching at universities because they could not take the clinical world anymore. They all did it for 20+years, too.
I have been in in the medical system EXTENSIVELY as a patient for over a decade and I can tell you most doctors and nurses are miserable and the only ones who seem to cope best are the ones who are most mentally organized. And they are amazing at what they do, too!
Don't go into medicine "on the fence". Figure out which side of the fence you want to be on, then proceed from there.
That said, you may also want to consider being a PA-C over an MD or a DO. I only say this because it seems that hospitals and clinics are staffing more PA-Cs than doctors these days. However, it appears they are used as doctor's slaves and possibly preferred over MDs to save on salary expenses (just a guess). But there sure are a lot of them these days. Way more than MDs.
Medicine isn't all "helping people" these days as much as it is treating a warm body the way insurance companies want you to treat them, regardless of how asinine it may be. I'm not saying doctors don't have freedom, but not as much as you might think. I've had plenty of my doctors leave the field and go into teaching at universities because they could not take the clinical world anymore. They all did it for 20+years, too.
I have been in in the medical system EXTENSIVELY as a patient for over a decade and I can tell you most doctors and nurses are miserable and the only ones who seem to cope best are the ones who are most mentally organized. And they are amazing at what they do, too!
Don't go into medicine "on the fence". Figure out which side of the fence you want to be on, then proceed from there.
That said, you may also want to consider being a PA-C over an MD or a DO. I only say this because it seems that hospitals and clinics are staffing more PA-Cs than doctors these days. However, it appears they are used as doctor's slaves and possibly preferred over MDs to save on salary expenses (just a guess). But there sure are a lot of them these days. Way more than MDs.