Artistic Science

dxmedstudent:

pleasedotheneedful:

rabid-dragoness:

dxmedstudent:

pleasedotheneedful:

pleasedotheneedful:

Don’t go to medical school.

I don’t necessarily rescind this statement but… prospective med students should know the ugly however statistically unlikely it is

I am not sure I would want my children to go into medicine, if I have any. I’m not saying I wouldn’t support them, but I’m not sure that this life is something I could recommend to people I love. I have a younger sister in med school (who will excel whatever she does, anx has the brains and guts to leave if she wishes), and a younger brother who I hope goes into a field that makes him happy.

It scares me that I have to worry about the wellbeing of all my friends in medicine. That I have to fight for my own sanity. And that though there are things I love about medicine, enough to stop me from leaving, I wish for better for those that I love. I want them to be happy, to feel valued and supported. To feel like they are living their best life. And that can be a hard thing to achieve in our line of work.

When I hear about classmates of classmates committing suicide on a monthly basis, something needs to change

I think this is a really important takeaway.

Yes, we should be proud of ourselves when we beat insurmountable odds to move forward in this field. Yes, we should have lots of quality exposure to be sure this is what we want.

But we shouldn’t congratulate ourselves for surviving in a broken system, and then turn around and perpetuate it to those coming after us. (One of my seniors brushed my concerns off with “that’s residency.”) This system, especially in GME, is set up to beat the joy of patient care out of us.

Medicine is a calling. You put almost a decade of work and huge sacrifice into it, only to find out in the course of a week that you may not get to practice? Forget being squeezed out of your specialty, what about not being a clinician at all?

Whenever stories break about another physician/student suicide, seldom do we actually see the dark side. We know someone died, we see there may have been cries for help, but the critically important details are left out. Notes are sometimes left and the contents are rarely discussed, which is understandable but tragic as I would bet there are a lot of answers about the way medical education failed them in a time of need.

My point is, we need to air the dirty laundry of medical education if there’s any hope in making it better and safer. My wife and I developed serious reservations about sending out kids to med school in the current climate… not because we became cynics about patient care, but because we worry they’ll be destroyed and become another statistic brushed under the rug.

Precisely.

So many people who are good doctors, and came into it with lots of determination, passion, skill and desire to help people, still end up burning out and leaving.

Whilst it’s fair to warn people of the reality (I believe schoolkids should be given the information to make more informed choices about their careers), that totally doesn’t excuse any line of work from being stressful and bad for you. It doesn’t excuse training pathways that basically leave you stranded and basically just ‘training’ yourself. It doesn’t excuse poor working conditions. It doesn’t excuse having to stay late. Or bullying. Or lack of support. Or just being expected to do too many things. Or how the system makes you personally responsible for all its failures. Or how (and I quote multiple people I know) problems are basically ignored unless you get to the point of having a breakdown.

Because it’s just not good enough to say “that’s just how it is”.

Excuse me. We restart hearts that stopped. We stitch up mangled limbs. We save babies dying of sepsis. We give people years of lives they would otherwise have lost. We restore quality of life. We restore equilibrium to minds that are hurting. We make death comfortable, and bring peace to the suffering. We work small miracles on a regular basis. And you think we’re going to take “that’s just how it is” ?!?

We make the difficult possible every day. If we can do that, then there’s no excuse; we (as a society) can make medicine better for the people in it.

(via secret-vetblr)