Hey Docs of Meddit, MS3 here, feeling a bit hopeless/disappointed with current medicine these days. Anyone care to help me out?
I'm a 24yo MS3 student. Ever since I was young kid I knew I wanted to go into medicine. I had shadowed/explored the career through high school and college and thought it was "cool/interesting." I really enjoyed MS1 and 2 and loved learning the path/pathophys. Understanding how things worked in the body was thrilling. I hated memorizing facts and such but did it to build the base of knowledge to work around. If I could understand something I could 9 out 10x remember it. Now I'm almost done w/ my 3rd rotation of MS3 (finished IM and surg) and I just feel depressed with the actual day to day goings on at the hospital. Maybe depressed isn't the right word though. It just seems like everything is so "protocol" based that half the time I just feel like robot. I really thought there'd be a lot more thinking/analysis involved. I mean I know I'm a 3rd year student and my role is more towards reporter/info gatherer but even what the interns and residents do seem so rote. What I enjoyed the most during the transition from MS2 to MS3 was being able to come up with a diagnosis/differential. But now 95% of the time that's not super challenging anymore. And oftentimes they just order labs/path that reveal what it is. Then people go into uptodate and look up how to manage/treat it if they'r unfamiliar with the diagnosis or if they want "new" ideas. It just feels like a robot can do it. Then on the surgical/procedural side, it seems like 75% of people's days are spent doing the same exact thing over and over. And a lot of it getting replaced by midlevel providers that just do the same thing over and over. I guess my main dissatisfaction is I just dont feel like im solving a puzzle or using my brain and energy meaningfully anymore. It seems like everyone just loves facts/memorizing random tidbits instead of doing any real analysis. They just seem to love regurgitating relative risks and probabilities. I guess my question is, what can I do to feel less like a robot and actually use my brain? What programs/specializations require more rigorous thought?
Posted Dec 2, 2012, 4:41 PM UTC