Hi everyone! First, I would like to congratulate those who score well in their SPM and to those who didn't, please please please don't be sad and. Bad SPM result doesn't mean you can't have a bright future. Your future is still bright as long as you work hard for it. There is more to life than just SPM result :) Well, I can't believe that my first post will be about this. I actually plan to write a while ago but I kept on forgetting as I had so many stuffs to do. Since the SPM result was announced yesterday and there were a few articles about should they take on medical after getting good result, I decided to talk a little bit about this.
To start with, I am a medical student myself so I know exactly just what you are going to experience if you continue to take medical course. Of course, before going to study medical, you need to go for pre-U programme first. There are a lots of choices to go for, be it Matriculation, STPM, or some other choices like A-Level, SAM (South Australian Matriculation) etc. Just go for the Education Fair that normally will be held after sometime before and after SPM to help the students to choose which one suits them the best. Just make sure to really understand the pros and cons of every programme. After you have completed your pre-U, this is the time to apply for medical course. Taking that you have already pass the minimum requirement and successfully entered medical school, there are a few facts that you need to know if you really want to choose doctor as your career in the future. Bear with me for a while because this will take quite some time to finish off.
1. Life in medical school is like a race.
What does it mean? It means that once you start your medical school, you have to start study NON-STOP and keep on revising on everything. Once you stop, you will have a big possibility of failing your exam and you absolutely don't want that to happen right? Just like a race, once the pistol is shot, you have to start sprinting until you reach the ending line, in this case, NONE. There is no end line if you become a doctor. Being a doctor is a lifelong process. Means? Doctors are attached to lifelong learning process, as long as you ARE a doctor, you will always need to continue to read and learn even AFTER you graduated from your medical school. There will always be new drugs, new therapy and new treatment. So if you think that you only need to study until you graduate, you are extremely wrong.
2. You will feel stupid ALL THE TIME.
No matter how smart you are and how good your results are when you were in high school, even if you are the top student, in medical school, somehow there will be people who are smarter than you. Besides, you will keep on making mistakes even a small one and medical school will always have a way to make you feel stupid. Small mistakes like not knowing how to differentiate veins, arteries and nerves in anatomy class because everything look the same, for remembering the wrong order of sign and symptoms of inflammation, or forgetting the process of metabolism of fat cells is enough to make you start feeling stupid. That feeling you will get it more often once you enter clinical. In the end, you will feel more depressed, feeling down and unable to study properly which will end up with bad result and causes you to feel more stupid and the cycle goes over and over again.
3. You won't have as much time as you used to for resting.
Since you need to study so much, resting more means not having enough time to cover everything you need to study. Medical is unlike high school. Remember we used to complain how thick our maths and biology book are? Medical books are way much thicker that those books and there are MANY of them waiting to be open to be read. I will give an example of how thick the books are: If you take an anatomy book and throw it to your friend, he/she will have a high possibility of having a dislocation or a bruise. Now you get it? I'm not saying that you shouldn't rest or wouldn't have time to rest because after all, resting is an important time for our body to recover and heal itself from all those hard work. Time management is very crucial, the better you manage your time, the better you rest you will get :)
4. You will have almost no time even for yourself.
Before medical school, Saturday and Sunday are our happy days but after medical school, they are no more happy days but miserable days. Last time, Saturday means hanging out with our friends or our family and enjoying to the max but this time, Saturday means sitting in front of the laptop studying the anatomy book and physiology book because next Monday you will be having anatomy exam and on Tuesday you will be having the physiology exam. On Sunday, still studying but this time studying for tutorial and preparing last minute for the anatomy exam then go to sleep and waking up the next morning with swollen eyes because you didn't get enough sleep last night.
5. Patient is always FIRST!
Most of my point I've mentioned previously are almost all regarding the time IN medical school, which means the things you will face when you are STILL a medical student. BUT one of the most frustrating thing that will happen to you after you become a doctor is whatever you do, PATIENT IS ALWAYS FIRST.
Yes, I am still a medical student but I know the feeling of doctors working in hospital because I've watched them, how they work, what they do and how they spend their time during my one month attachment in one of the hospital in Malaysia. It's worst when you are still a houseman. You go to hospital when the sun is not out yet and you go back home when everybody at home is sleeping. Sleep for few hours, get up and repeat the whole process over and over again for the whole week. You only get a few days off from each department and you will only be granted your sweet day off if you have valid reason. Sometimes, after you went home, something happen in the hospital to the patient you treated this evening and the MO on-call calls you back to ask you a few things and you have to rush back to the hospital when you are just about to change and take a nice shower before you sleep. Another example, a routine working day for a doctor (MO and specialists) is starting from 8am, you will go for ward round and maybe finishes around 9am-9.30am or later depending on the number of patients and wards to be attended. Then, you go down to the clinic and starts your clinic work and start checking patients. Your phone rang and when you check it, it's your family but you couldn't pick it up because you are so busy with attending patients and referring patients for various procedure. Around 12.30pm, your family maybe your husband/wife/mom/siblings came and bring you lunch and you had to make them wait because you still have patients to attend and your family had no other choice but to wait for you to finish up the clinic because they want to eat with you. So they waited until 1.30pm when you last patient came out from the room and you have to make them wait for a little while more as you need to set up the last appointment from other department for the patient just now and just the moment you finish and was just about to sit down and eat with your family, a phone call came and it says you need to come to A & E asap because a MVA patient just came in and stop breathing and you need to run again to attend that patient. Once again, you are sorry that you have to leave your family behind because since you are a doctor, PATIENT COMES FIRST. Whatever you do, saving patient is your first priority and will forever be. I hope you understand the point that I'm trying to say here. No matter how guilty you feel, no matter how sad you are, you can't change the fact that you need to run to hospital because there has been a major accident, patients are overflowing and the hospital is in need of all the staffs they can get even if it means you have to leave behind your wife who has just given birth, rejecting the call from your mom that waited so long just to talk and listen to your voice because a baby in the ward suddenly turn blue and stop breathing etc. These are just a few examples and in your whole life as a doctor, you will absolutely need to make more sacrifices more than you can think of.
6. Your friends will slowly distant away from you.
"Hey, let's go for a drink this Saturday. 7pm at A Cafe. See you there!" "Oh I'm so so sorry, I can't go coz I'm working night shift that day." "How about next Friday night?" "I'm sorry, I'm working as well." This might happen to you after you become a doctor and in the early stages, you will have to reject many of those offers to go hangout with your old friends but in the later stages, you won't have to do it again because slowly you will get lesser and lesser invitation and in the end they will stop calling you. Yes, you will be sad and hurt by it but you can't expect your friends to understand you and your situation. People will always think, if they value something, they will try and make time for it regardless of how busy they are but do you think that they will understand that you can't leave because even though your patient is looking stable now and breathing normally, can suddenly develop dyspnoe and seizure anytime? Imagine if no one is there looking after the patient, what will happen to the patient? Even your family won't understand you, only you and your colleagues understand the hardships doctors are going through. Unless any of your friends or family members are in medical field, do not expect them to understand you. You can't. They won't be able to. In the end, it's only you.
7. The stress is OVERWHELMING.
I think I should mention this point earlier but never mind as long as I didn't forget to. For this point, it will start from the moment you enter medical school. When you realize after that whole week of burning midnight oil, you still have a lot to catch up with the previous lecture and to study for exam, you will start to feel stress, or even before that you will be so stressful already. The exam is coming, a whole pile of books and notes waiting to be studied, that presentation to prepare, all these will absolutely make no effort at all to make you feel stress. The sudden exam in clinical, the fear of making mistake because you are directly dealing with human lives, and many more to be mentioned here. In fact, almost everything in medical school is stressing you. In my case, I think one of the biggest stress factor is the fact that nothing can stay long in my head even after reading it for so many times. I hate it so much and at the same time, I'm stress because if it continues to happen, I will fail my exam and I will have to repeat it which will waste more time and energy and happiness of course.
8. You won't be as rich as hell after you become a doctor.
Aiming to get that fortune? I suggest you to take up business studies. Some people say doctors are a good career because they got paid handsomely! Are you sure? How sure are you? Doctors' pay are not even commensurate with the work they've done. Imagine, getting paid only rm4k-6k for all the extended working hours, the holidays that you hardly get, the workload you get everyday, the lack of sleep, all the mental torture you get, and you call that good pay? Not to mention, from the pay you still have to pay back the loan because you can't get any scholarship when you were in medical school. Of course, students that get scholarship don't have to pay any loan, in return they just need to work with the government for 5-10 years if I'm not mistaken. After all that, you will be left like around 1/4th-1/3rd of your paycheck. After studying like dogs, getting mental torture everyday, lacking of sleep like a zombie, and getting paid just enough, you still consider that as highly paid? No dear, in fact, doctors are underpaid.
9. Medical course are COSTLY.
So, after reading all the above point and you go like "it's okay, I can deal with all that," remember this: medical school is never cheap. So, you pass everything, you have an extremely good result both in high school and pre-U, and as if Lady Luck hates you, you didn't get any scholarship. Yes, it can happen. It's Malaysia and believe me, even straight A's students sometimes didn't get any scholarship. In case that happen, you need to take up loan to pay for the fee. The fees are shockingly expensive. After the fees, you still have to buy the books which are very expensive because it's medical books, all the tools you need in your medical studies such as stethoscope, lab coat, sphygmomanometer etc etc, all that cost a fortune. Depends on where you got your loan from, some loans couldn't even cover the whole course. Your parents might need to cover some of the fees using their money or maybe try to get another loan. Don't you feel sad for yourself? When still a student, you study like hell trying to raise your grades so that if you get lucky you might be able to get a scholarship, or if can't, at least graduate with no problem to start working fast. When you start to work, you work like beast to get the money to pay off the loan/s you got for not being able to get hold of any scholarship last time.
One more point, not only the straight A's students can take up medicine but also the not all straight A's students are able to take up medical course. Just make sure you have to have a good result in all your science subjects (Biology, Chemistry, Physics) and Add Maths. You need to have a minimal requirement of B in all the subjects above or you will be facing a huge possibility of being unemployed after graduation. It's a new law enforced by the MOH. I'm not saying anyone can be a doctor, I just hope you really understand your own limit and how far you can go. And PLEASE don't lie to yourself because in the end, the one gonna suffer the most is YOU.
Anyway, it's your choice to choose your own future. Just please think carefully, don't make any mistake because your choice now will affect not only you but your family and friends in the future. Is this what I want? Will this make me happy? Will I be able to do this? Can I bear the pain?
Last but not the least, good luck and may you choose the best road! :)
Being a doctor is not only about learning a disease, learning the signs and symptoms,
meeting a patient and getting a right diagnosis but it's more to that.
It's about making sacrifice, not only to yourself but also to your family, friends, patients
and basically to everyone around you, being tough and learning to manage yourself.
There is a lot more than meets the eyes that need to be understand, so dig through and know them well before you take this road as your choice.
