The emotional cost of becoming a doctor
- Maddy
- Jan 3, 2021
- 3 min read
Introduction
Starting the medical school is so dreamy, you start to meet all of those amazing people with the motivation to learn and help in future. Let's be honest, medical students are not always motivated. There are so many break downs, tears and hard times along their way. I probably had dozens of those stressful days and I’m just a second-year medical student. But at the end of the day, we should all try to adapt ourselves to different situations we face. To be able to adapt, It’s important to know what are the challenges in your path so you can get prepared before they attack you. As you may have guessed in this post I’ll talk about some of these challenges that I personally faced till now, and give you some advice on how to deal with them. Let’s dive in.
1. Burden of studying
Let’s just say there is something around 700 muscles in the body and you have to memories most of them with their movements, attachment points, and etc. You may be surprised that these will be covered only in small sections of each of your modules, so it’s noting compared to all the pathophysiology of diseases and mechanism of drugs that you have to learn.
To deal with this you have to come up with a way to optimise your studying, and changing the method of studying isn’t a one-day thing, it takes a good number of months to find the best way of study that suits you.
I know it’s cheeky but check out our post about different active methods of studying which may help you to overcome this burden.
2. Confusion about your future speciality
When I started to do medicine I wouldn’t stop talking about neurosurgery. I think I just didn’t know enough about various specialities that are out there. I can truly see myself getting more confused as we are learning about more systems in the body. I think we all need to notice that when we start medicine we don’t have to know what we want to do as our speciality. you have 5/6 years to think about it, so chill!!
I know it’s hard to answer all relatives and friends, who constantly ask you what speciality you want to do in future, but you need to realise that you will get the chance to see and explore all the specialities, or at least most of them so give yourself some time.
3. Tuition fees
this one specifically impacts international and EU students in the UK. For instance, to start studying medicine from 2021/2022 at Aston university you have to pay around £42,750 per year as EU/international student. Plus international students can’t even apply for any scholarships or funds that is available for home students, which adds even more pressure on Them. Personally, l’m paying hard for this emotional cost, and I hope one day we get a chance to overcome it.
4. Feeling incompetent
By this, I simply mean there are many times that I forget names of various diseases, different mechanisms of drugs and, etc. So I often think I may not be competent enough to become a doctor because of that which is so wrong. I bet if you ask the doctors you know they have forgotten so much about what they learnt in medical school. The reason is, when you pass the medical school and get to a speciality you don’t have to know all of those muscles that you memorised in medical school. You are required to be competent in the field that you want to get your speciality at. So, let’s all try to put less pressure on ourselves.
Conclusion
Writing about these challenges not only gives me a chance to make you ready for medical school but also helps me to overcome my stress. Remember, If you are studying medicine, never doubt yourself because with doubt you only kill your dream of becoming a doctor. So heads up and go study with a smile.
XOXO
Maddy
Medxadventure
Comments