Fleeing the Madness

It has been over a month since I posted. In that month I grew to like medicine less and less. In fact, while the science of medicine is still my love, the actual practice of medicine has chipped away at who i am day by day. I find myself readjusting my goals in life each day. And it's hard to pin down exactly what is so difficult.

1. My expectations were way off. I thought it would be more about medicine, science and learning. Instead it's mainly about rank and prestige. It's actually quite sad cause now is the time we need good doctors.

2. Constant pressure from others telling me i need to "beat" my classmates. This surprised me. Why am i trying to beat them? Should we not be working together to some greater good? From all angles people are telling me, "all you need to do is make honors" on medicine and surgery to get a decent residency....Well, to make "honors" you need to be in the top 15% of the class or so. AND, this is based on eval letters from housestaff at the hospital and a final exam. Remember, this is 100 people out of 6,000+ that applied for our seats in med school. Its like taking the best player from each NBA team and putting them on one team and then saying "Now you 5 play together out there, BUT the one that scores the most points will get the big contract!"

It ain't exactly the best way to encourage team play....and this is in a hospital! So you get students sneaking out to go study, doing the least they can to "get by" with their patients...It's a disgusting way of doing things. Why in the world would you have grades at this point? It should be a final you have to PASS to demonstrate proficiency in the area and then comments/letters. The grade should simply be pass. It is all so absurd and simply engenders poor pt care. I learned VERY early NOT to look deep into the literature on my pts problems, but memorize a list of things from a book to spit back. That is what is encouraged. That is what they want.


No wonder health care fails here in so many ways. For as creative as we are in every other industry, medicine has failed to understand the value of good minds and creative people.

I wish I could change it, but I don't see how. It seems too big. My only vision is to start over with my own medical school.

In the last few days I started to readjust my goals in life a bit - perhaps to be outside of the madness that we call medicine in this country...