Medical School Is No Bed of Roses

But ne’re the rose without the thorn.

Robert Herrick (1891-1674),  The Rose

October 16, 2012 – The opening paragraph in the October 12 Market Watch publication “10 Things Medical Schools Won’t Tell” goes:

" By the time most medical school students are assisting in hospitals — shadowing the doctors they aspire to someday become — many are well-accustomed to being pushed around, yelled at, or called derogatory names.Such incidents aren’t new, but with the med student population only growing (admissions are up 17% since 2002, with schools working to address a projected shortage of 90,000 doctors by 2020), cracking down on the problem has becoming a matter of increasing urgency. Especially in cases of more severe abuse: A survey conducted this year by the Association of American Medical Colleges, or AAMC, 33% of students said they were publicly humiliated at least once during medical school, 15% said they were the object of sexist remarks and 9% said they were required to run errands for doctors."

The ten things you don’t hear about what medical schools are like are these.

1.       Bullying, teaching – same difference.

2.      We just added teamwork to our cutting edge curriculum.

3.      Be prepared to share the spotlight.

4.      You’re not getting in here without some people skills.

5.      Undergraduate transfers may be used against you.

6.      Getting into medical school was tough. Try getting a residency.

7.      Offshore is not just a factory anymore.

8.      Your foreign colleagues may put your skills to shame.

9.      Indebtedness isn’t an illness among doctors – it’s an epidemic.

10.  Medicine isn’t a prescription for riches.

I will leave it to your imagination to ascertain that these ten things mean. 

Suffice it to say,  medical school can be grueling,  humiliating, tough to get into and out of,  may require rubbing elbows and minds and competing with foreign medical school graduates, entails piling up debts, and may not meet income expectations.

Small wonder that doctor surveys indicate 6 o 10 practicing physicians do not recommend medicine to their offspring or to young people.

Tweet:  Getting into medical school, finishing it,  affording it,  and paying off your debts given present doctor incomes is no bed of roses.