college, med school, phd, residency, fellowship. Tired of seeing my life pass in front of me and do nothing. tired of work and study over nothing.
i hate my job, i hate my patients and those stupid nurses. i hate my colleges and my life i think i just hate myself. I sleep 3 hours every day, have to do everything im expected to do everything right and to be perfect outside work
Im tired of trying to be perfect. even though I've worked hard to be here, I am lazzy and not very smart. I used to care, now i don't give a damn if you get better or not.
Im so fucking tired of being given bullshit at work everyday. and then i get home and get extra bullshit for not returning calls? what do you think i WAS DOING? TANNING MY ASS AND DRINKING BEER IN HAWAII? NO!!! I was fucking working like an idiot.
fuck everything this life is shit | |
It is everybody else that literally destroys my spirit and any happiness I have ever had. Hard to smile. Ever.
completed my mbbs nd nw getting results of various pg exams
after lots of hard work i m still nt getting a gud rank and i dnt know where i m lacking
i hate dat day when i decided to b a doctor
As an Intern:
- Long hours, poor social life.
- Half the time, they won't pay you overtime (even if you had 20 cannulas to put in because you were expected to do it during the day).
- Boring co-workers (other doctors). The only "funny" stories they have to tell you are complaints or how they managed to get a cannula in but forgot that the patient already had one put in 30min ago.
- You're the shit-taker. No staff-member or patient would hesitate to talk to you like you're their slave (and not a doctor). Seniors dump their load on you and refuse to help out because they think "it's not their job".
- People bitch and complain about you (especially your own registrars), even about things as trivial as "he was rude" or "he came late" (by 2 min). You can't complain about anyone because no one would support you..in fact, everyone will gang up on you.
- People don't respect that you are doing your best to manage a massive load (and not spending your day sipping champagne at a bar)."We paged him first thing in the morning for a discharge summary but it STILL hasn't been done at 3pm".
- You get paid as much as a nurse.
- You don't really learn much. In fact, you probably knew more when you were in med school.
- It changes your personality. It makes you a serious, boring dullard.
- No one appreciates all the challenging cases you've dealt with. They will, however, remember you for a tiny slip-up (e.g. forgetting to do something when you had a million jobs), with a black mark next to your name.
Resident:
- Most of the above.
- Your body starts to take a physical toll.
- Begin to face the reality..you HAVE to study forever.
Medicine is hard.
It is fucking hard.
The amount of effort is insane...
I guess the problem for me is not so much the work (I am a paed resident - I get through it) but the colleagues.
Doctors are conservative - personally and politically and are just not that interesting. Years of study and insane hours have removed all that remains of what was probably a very studious, conservative and type A personality to start with. I just don't relate to them on a personal level...I don't relate to their superconservative life values and life course...I also don't relate to the competitiveness and the crawling to superiors.
To be honest - its the patients as well...
Medical problems in kids can be completely heartbreaking. Particularly if you can only offer treatments that are marginally effective.
Then there are the parents.
I am genuinely shocked at the number of stupid, personality disordered and out and out neglectful even abusive parents.... oh yes, various social services get involved but to what effect??? None as far as I can see. There are some seriously fucked up parents out there. But anyone can breed. And the more stupid amongst us breed more.
I went into this job to help people.
To help people.
I am left believing that this system actually stops us from effectively helping people.
And wondering whether some people are actually beyond help.
It seems that many of my colleagues have gone into medicine for other reasons....its a steady, relatively high earning job. I think some do it because they like the competitive aspect. I am just not that competitive... Never have been. I studied hard because I found the course material interesting and wanted to see how well I could do. Beating out other people intellectually doesn't do it for me. But that seems to be the buzz that many of my colleagues get out of work.
I am lucky in that I live in a country where the debt for training incurred is minimal. So my debts are low (about $50000 - and I have $40000 saved from my internship already).
I loved medical school for the intellectual stimulation. I loved learning about physiology and biochemistry and although I don't have alot of experience as a scientist I reckon I could retrain in that quite easily.
But what I would really love to do is; create my own self-sufficient paradise. That sounds like a dream, doesn't it? A selfish dream....
Is it wrong to be selfish like this? It seems plenty of other people live their lives much more selfishly....
I wish i could be 18 again and study something else. :(
Patients can be an awesome pain in the ass (not all, but some, certainly).
They want you to commit to a diagnosis (before the bloods and xrays come back), they want you to commit to a prognosis (and refuse to believe that statistics have a range, that different people can experience different side effects and heaven forbid I might give you something different than Uncle Lenny got up the road for his diabetes). They want to be told that everything will be fine and dandy if they just take this pill...
And god forbid you should try to tell them if they're exaggerating symptoms. Or that there might be, just maybe, just a smidge of psychological overlay to their presentation...
And young people... holy crap have they always been so weak?? When was the last time you saw a young person lets say 15-20yos who did not moan and groan about having blood taken or an injection...1/2 of them are uncomfortable about swallowing a pill because they're so used to syrups...
And their parents cave!!!! Yes, they cave!!!
Can my poor little precious forego the bloods??
Can my poor little precious have a syrup, they're not very good at taking pills.
Because you haven't taught the little sweetie.
And the little sweetie has just told me he's been having unprotected anal sex with his girlfriend.
So the cause of his UTI and fever might be on the exotic side Mrs Idiot. So little booboo will have to be a good little boy and get his blood cultures.
They haven't been raised to be courageous.
I feel sorry for them.
I remember conquering my fears of injections at age 6 for gods sake and I'm not a particularly courageous person.
The real patients. The really sick patients do not frustrate me. I want to help them - but often our tools and resources are limited. And then there's the whole balance between; are we doing more harm than good here? Always a moral quandary. And Jesus, I'm not God. I don't know. I don't know. Here's a trial of 15 patients from Uruguay with your condition and with this treatment they had a mean survival time of 6 months, but it varied from 2-15 months. And 30% of them had horrible side effects that made them think life was not worth living. And you are not taking a word of this in are you? Because I just said 2 months.
So that's medicine in a nutshell. Either frustrating or sad. Always stressful.
A junior doc (ie first 5-10 years post-graduate) earns a pretty normal wage but work very long hours with lots of night shifts. The pay for junior doctor jobs would be pretty much on par for any other professional or trades qualified person who has to work the same hours. Except; doctors really do have more responsibility than most of these. If your junior accountant makes a mistake on your tax return that loses you $1000 dollars you are annoyed, but if he corrects his mistake you'll forget about it. If your doctor makes a mistake by missing a rare diagnosis that he hasn't seen before then you hate him and you probably will sue him too. As you should. I am not arguing that doctors shouldn't have that responsibility.
To be honest with you; i lived on much less than $50000 a year in the 7 years I was student (worked as a carer, then a university tutor during that time). And truth be told, I could happily do it again. Any doc who gets in it for the money is a fool. And its actually a rare motivation in my experience.
More common motivations are:
1) to help people
2) interested in studying physiology/anatomy/disease/surgery/human nature
3) its a secure job, particularly when alot of other jobs are about who you know not what you know
4) the parents like it and it still has some prestige (especially in migrant communities)
But the reality of the job can make you question your motivations.
I can't understand why our field still treats its members so barbarically. Being expected to function on no sleep and still see whiny patients in clinic and continue with all the admin crap that has to be done by close of business that day. I can't stand working for those "9 to 5ers" who can't comprehend the pain and bullshit that we have to go through. I've got so much more to vent but will stop now.
1- Living frugally, save up a little nest egg
2- Bail
Find something else to do--anything else.
Medicine will suck the joy, the hope the life out of you.
I was fishing a stream near my medical school, there were two homeless men under a bridge. They scrapped-up enough money to buy a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20.
That sat there drinking & giggling like little school girls.
Next day I'm doing my Anesthesia rotation, and see well-educated, well-paid, ~respected doctors, miserable as all hell.....
I don't envy the homeless men, but it took very little to make them happy.
I don't envy the doctors; they had almost everything, but happiness cannot be bought.
I wrote a book but didn't do as well as I hope. I started to motivational speaking but haven't got a paid performance as yet. Now I 33 years with a 20000 student loan, a child on the way and unemployed. I spoke to my family about how I feel about the profession but all I hear is you are a doctor, you are a doctor. The funniest thing is my wife has a degree in teaching but never taught. She started business as soon as she finished her degree. Now, she has no student loan, a profitable business and happy. Me I am constantly depressed as FUCK. It comes to point where it is affecting our relationship. If I don't come up with a business plan as soon as possible, my savings will done, and I will be broke and have no choice to return to medicine. My advice DON'T DO MEDICINE IF YOU WANT TO HAVE GOD IN THE CENTER OF YOUR LIFE, BE HEALTHY, SURROUNDED BY FAMILY AND FRIENDS AND MAKE MONEY.
New Comment