I remember the moment I wanted to become a doctor. I was fourteen years old and had just learned of the organization Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières). This wonderful organization provides medical care to the world's most vulnerable populations, and I remember thinking to myself "I could do that!"
Always a community-minded, altruistic person, being a doctor seemed like the perfect fit for me. Thus began the long, tortuous road of medical school, a road that leads nowhere.
It's been three years since I left, and even now when people ask me what made medical school so bad I tell them I don't even know where to begin.
I could tell them about the classes, which are poorly taught, have nothing to do with treating patients, and are not placed in any broader context. You're basically expected to memorize thousands of random facts, regurgitate them for an exam, and that is somehow supposed to make you a good doctor.
I could tell them about the competitiveness, the endless hours of studying (literally, it never ends), the rude residents, even ruder attendings (medical speak for a doctor that has finished all their training), the pointless licensing exams that you spend months studying for only to forget everything you learned the moment you answer the last question.
Yes, it is all of this, but so much more too. The worst part is the intangibles, the constant feelings of not being smart enough, not being good enough, not ever knowing enough, and thinking these things in an environment that makes you feel like if you're struggling, it's all your fault.
If you even dare mention any of these thoughts to fellow classmates, administrators, practicing doctors, friends, or your parents, they will simply offer trite platitudes like "just try harder," and "it's hard but it's worth it." Medical school is not hard; it's miserable. And it is anything but worth it.
In fact, these well-meaning people, some who actually even enjoyed medical school (I know, I was shocked too!), make the experience even worse.
As if medical students don't feel inadequate enough, now they're told that their own feelings aren't even valid, and that if the profession was truly right for them then they would just suck it up, stop complaining, and be grateful that they got into medical school in the first place. This in turn, causes medical students to doubt their own abilities and reasons for wanting to be a doctor.
When it comes to conversations about the challenges of graduate education, the seminal issue really comes down to one thing: is it the student's fault or the system's fault?
It's the system's fault, and the medical field will keep losing great people until it recognizes this and creates fundamental changes to the system.
Until that happens, if it ever does, the field will just keep churning out stressed, indebted, sleep-deprived, burnt-out doctors that are expected to work in an increasingly fragmented, impersonal, and chaotic health care system. You don't have to be a doctor to know that a job like that is bad for your health.