Is medicine worth it?

[monkeymonkey]

Purely in terms of effort required, is going into medicine worth it these days? Does it make it substantially easier to find employment versus other fields? I've heard that the field is becoming pretty saturated these days, but I don't think that's true. Would just like some of your opinions

[monkeymonkey]

Yeah, I agree with you haha. I'm not really considering med tbh, this was just a curiosity of mine.

[Russ]

The field is becoming more saturated but employment is still much better than many other fields. In general, I think from an objective perspective medicine is not a particularly great field to work in but it's certainly an area that offers a lot of unique experiences/opportunities that appeal to people. Having said that, there are a lot of people (me included to some extent) who like the idea of medicine but are less enamored of the reality.

[Sense]

The field is becoming more saturated but employment is still much better than many other fields. In general, I think from an objective perspective medicine is not a particularly great field to work in but it's certainly an area that offers a lot of unique experiences/opportunities that appeal to people. Having said that, there are a lot of people (me included to some extent) who like the idea of medicine but are less enamored of the reality.

What do you mean by less enamored of the reality ?
Harder then you expected ? Not the content you expected ?

[drake]

^ probably the workload + hours, especially as an intern. i know someone who does 16 hour shifts regularly as an intern... crazy!

[pi]

The intern is said to be the *easiest* and least busy year after graduation. I have heard this from multiple registrars and consultants so far and I'll take their word for it.

[Inside Out]

medicine is worth it if you're not lazy and enjoy working your ass off and not having enough sleep

[slothpomba]

I think it's sometimes overly glorified here and among students in general (and in certain cultures). It's a fine profession (so are many others), you get to help people (you can do this in many others), the money isn't bad (like so many other professions). A prospective student must ask what draws them to medicine that isn't these things or indeed, what draws them to any degree at all. If you go into it with wrong motivations or expectations, it's no shock you'll wind up burnt.

People do drop out of medicine (i know so), shock horror. I'm sure there are some doctors who don't enjoy their job and would rather do something else, shock horror! I say this absolutely not to discourage, doctors are crucial for our society, they've been crucial as long as society has existed (medicine men, etc). I just think the glorification that sometimes is worked up in students minds can lead to less than optimal outcomes. There's no reason you couldn't learn to love it or just do it for the money but then why couldn't you do this in innumerable other professions too?

It's a hard and long path. It's hard academically but also the kind of baggage being a doctor brings into your psychological and personal life as well (not unique to medicine)

[Russ]

What do you mean by less enamored of the reality ?
Harder then you expected ? Not the content you expected ?

In general a lot of VCE students don't really appreciate what medicine entails, irrespective of whether they have had some experiences with the field before (being a patient, having a parent, doing work experience), since none of those things really demonstrate what the job is like. As such, it's a very human reaction to idealise it or handwave away the downsides and convince yourself that the significant negatives won't impact on you/you're capable of overcoming them. You see it a lot when students say that they're excited by the amount of things to learn etc.

I have slightly different concerns now that I've been in the system for a while but the above is the main thing I see with prospective students.