5 things to expect while in med school.

Medical school has been part of pop culture thanks to TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Scrubs, House or recently The Good Doctor. This post is for aspiring doctors who form a picture of their future medical school after binge watching one of these.

It also will also paint a real picture for most people who visit hospitals just as patients once in a while and ever wondered what happens behind the scenes once they are gone.

So here is my pick of top 5 things that hit you unexpectedly once you step into the walls of medical school.

• You’re saving lives everyday.

It’s a good thing to boast about once you acquire the coveted tag of doctor-in-the-making at a fancy hospital. Most med students would softly chuckle to it, resisting the urge to break the lofty myth that makes them look all high and mighty. The truth is, knowing first hand, that most of your time goes in learning the ropes of treating seemingly mundane ailments like cough, cold, backache, headache, acidity, constipation, loose motion, insect bites, rashes and so on.

Even in your senior years your day revolves around hoping that the patient will say the same things he told you earlier, in front of the teachers and not make you look like a idiot.

Suddenly, all your smartness is judged based on you knowing when did the patient poop last, or what he ate 3 days back, when did he last fart or is making up everything to skip work..! So, not every day is an exciting episode of scrubs. Most days are like re runs of tutorial videos.

• Medical school is all study no fun.

Hell no. Agree we’re still to have a Chetan Bhagat equivalent to make med school life sound cool and mainstream. But consider this : almost 6 years of undergraduate plus 3 years of post graduate college time gives ample opportunities to go all ballistic when not digging deep in books. Its at least twice if not less college time than most non medico folks. Most of the medical schools make it mandatory to live on campus. Hence young, smart and till recently suppressed folks by burden of entrance exams find utopia as soon as they step into the hostel.

Late night patient calls don’t always end  sombre background music with teary eyed relatives serious faced doctors. Often they lead to revelries till wee ours of next morning and last minute rush to reach the class on time and well oriented.

• Its not just an academic or vocational course, its a lifestyle.

Most jobs train you to work from 9 to 5. Also, not many jobs bring you so close to human lives at their best and worst moments. But in medical school you are around round the clock generally so you start developing a lifestyle around your work. Where most jobs give you money in exchange of your time, so that you can live a free life in the time left, in medicine lines between work and personal life often blur.

This is also what gives rise to the unconventional way of looking at life, above and beyond religion, race or money which is considered weird otherwise.

• You become used to hang around intelligent folks.

People who land in a medical school after jumping so may hoops are bound to be smart and deserving. Once you get used to being friends with such folks it becomes difficult adjusting to laymen talk revolving around mundane things of life. Not that it should turn you into a snob. But I am sure at some point the felling will rise that you can’t deal with trivial issues with the same seriousness as other folks.

• Even med students wonder why did they come here.

There are good days and bad. Some days even med students question if they are cut out for being a doctor or not.

Training in a hospital can be mentally and physically gruelling, like army training where going can get unbearably tough at times. Once you overcome that, and then again a couple of times, you know that you have achieved a higher threshold for emotional and physical breakdowns, which is a very secure feeling to have.

If I had to describe years of medical training in a matter of few sentences, it would go like this :

Medical school is like a long well balanced movie with its fair share of melodrama, highs and lows, ups and downs in which every actor is a hero.

Let me know your story here and here.

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