Wold you do it again?

tallaght01

Was just having a chat with me mum this morning. She sees how knackered I am after being on nights and perpetually on-call. She sees the stress of dealing with sick babies first hand in me. She was asking me if, given the chance, would I do medicine again. I have to say that i couldn't say "yes" for definite.

I was going to study economics, but chose medicine. However, economists have arguably made a bigger contribution to population health than doctors ever will, and they certainly have the potential to make a bigger difference, in my opinion. So maybve i'd have been en econimist gien the chance again.

So here's the question....Would you all choose the same profession given the chance again? I'd be interested in your comments.

John

Probably. Maybe not the exact same field but I'd definitely be somewhere close to where I am now. I wanted to do pharmacy originally but didn't get the points and after sharing lectures with pharmacy students for four years, I was delighted I didn't get in. None of them seemed to have any appreciation for what they were doing or why they were doing it (during one neuropharmacology lecture one future pharmacist complained to his friend: "Why the **** do we need to learn about this, what are the chances of someone actually having epilepsy?"). Research definitely suits my way of working but so many different fields are so interesting that I may not have chosen electrophysiology and memory as my area. I'd love to do work in developmental biology, particularly the Edinburgh Mouse Atlas project. I'd also like to do work in pharmacology, especially antidepressants. Or possibly something more zoological. Damn. So many choices.

Schlemm

That's a laugh about the pharmacy, I feel exacly the same way about it! I did it for a year in college myself and I hated every minute of it. Most of the class just learned the lectures by rote and seemed to have no real interest in what was going on or about some of the big issues in Pharmacy, medically or socially. I think most of them just wanted the job and to get on with it, and TBH a lot of the stuff that you learn in Pharmacy is never going to be used by the pharmacists themselves. I was more interested in the research side of it myself but the course seemed to teach a little of everything and a lot of nothing, and I also realised that I wanted a more 'hands on' job rather than a job in a lab. Now I'm doing veterinary and I love it, tough old career but at least it's rewarding. A lot of ppl dropped out of Pharmacy and I think it's hard to know what you want to do the minute that you leave school, you grow up so much between then and graduating from college.

nesf

tallaght01 wrote:

I was going to study economics, but chose medicine.

Completely off-topic but if you are in any way scientifically minded then economics can be a very hard subject to accept. Or any social science for that matter. I changed from Physics to Economics and am having a lot of trouble suppressing that little "hard-science" voice in me that points out all the flaws in the methods used.

tallaght01

agree with you, nesf. I did an open university short course in social sciences, and constantly got slated in my assignments for pulling their methods to pieces.

They really don't like that. But a friend of mine is an economist and he's doing a short contract in papua new guinea working on anti poverty measures with their govt. If he has any success he may well save more lives in his short spell there than i do in my career.

nesf

tallaght01 wrote:

agree with you, nesf. I did an open university short course in social sciences, and constantly got slated in my assignments for pulling their methods to pieces.

I've noticed that, though they tend to not mind it so much so long as you reference papers within the field for back-up. As soon as you start actually questioning their methods themselves their backs get up. As one of my lecturers put it to me, econometrics is more of an art than a science. The maths is there for show rather than rigour tbh (though saying it openly can be a bad idea).

tallaght01 wrote:

They really don't like that. But a friend of mine is an economist and he's doing a short contract in papua new guinea working on anti poverty measures with their govt. If he has any success he may well save more lives in his short spell there than i do in my career.

Tbh, I'd never look at things that way. The size of the difference one makes doesn't matter so long as some difference is made. I'd have as much respect for someone who lives a normal life but who does an occasional charity walk or something as the guy who flies out to famine stricken areas and actually lives there helping people. It's a bit counter-intuitive to some people but I have respect for the motivation rather than the act if that makes sense.

tallaght01

tallaght01 wrote:

Was just having a chat with me mum this morning. She sees how knackered I am after being on nights and perpetually on-call. She sees the stress of dealing with sick babies first hand in me. She was asking me if, given the chance, would I do medicine again. I have to say that i couldn't say "yes" for definite.

I was going to study economics, but chose medicine. However, economists have arguably made a bigger contribution to population health than doctors ever will, and they certainly have the potential to make a bigger difference, in my opinion. So maybve i'd have been en econimist gien the chance again.

So here's the question....Would you all choose the same profession given the chance again? I'd be interested in your comments.

Ha! Tallaghto1, I'm doing economics and was having the exact same thoughts except the other way around...

I'd have loved to have done medicine but am no way near smart enough, so ended up in Economics.

Personally, I think that medical research makes a much greater contribution to human life; the world would survive and function without the social 'sciences'* but without the medical profession we would all be dead by 40. Look at Jared Diamond's classic 'Guns, Germs and Steel' to see what the effect of sucessful medical reaserch has had on populations and civilisations [whether or not you agree that increasing population is a positive or negative effect, there is no doubt that lives have been saved which is a benefit, just not necessairily a net benefit]



Please don't tell the economics forum I said that!





*Cheap plug of one of my essays but is related to the hard v social science debate

Time Magazine

original_psycho wrote:

Please don't tell the economics forum I said that!

We hear all.

That applies to you too, nesf. You're a dead man

nesf

Ibid wrote:

We hear all.

That applies to you too, nesf. You're a dead man

Pfft, you know as well as I do that the reality in the journals is a far cry from the macro/micro stuff you see in the lecture halls. Most of the lecturers admit it too.

nesf

nesf wrote:

Pfft, you know as well as I do that the reality in the journals is a far cry from the macro/micro stuff you see in the lecture halls. Most of the lecturers admit it too.

True.

But you have to start somewhere

nesf

original_psycho wrote:

True.

But you have to start somewhere

I don't disagree, it can just be quite frustrating at times.

Lisapeep

tallaght01 wrote:

She was asking me if, given the chance, would I do medicine again. I have to say that i couldn't say "yes" for definite.

Would changing profession be an option for you? I wonder do many doctors change profession after they have qualified. You hear about people in other jobs changing career path all the time!

Faith

Look at all these new people in the B/M forum!

If I could do it all over again, I think I'd work harder to have gotten medicine first time round. I don't really like my course, and can't see myself working in a lab or anything when I'm done. It was a good way to get out of Ireland though.

InFront

Is there some weird maths-medicine relationship at play here guys?! I had maths down after medicine on the CAO, and by either good luck or bad luck ended up with the latter.
I hate questions like this because there's nothing you can really do about it! But in many ways I would prefer to be heading into the home stretch of a maths degree right now than the beginning of a long, long medical education. It is true that medicine is not the only "useful" employment that there is, and personally I wouldn't rule out moving to another discipline after graduating.

I do know that I'm in medicine for good reasons, but I'm not sure that good reasons are always the correct reasons.

PoleStar

nesf wrote:

Completely off-topic but if you are in any way scientifically minded then economics can be a very hard subject to accept. Or any social science for that matter. I changed from Physics to Economics and am having a lot of trouble suppressing that little "hard-science" voice in me that points out all the flaws in the methods used.

Ha this is so true.

I recently did a managment diploma over one year to help me down the line in my career. I found it very strange. I came from my medical background where when u sit in lectures you would usually end up with maybe 4 pages of hard facts written down at the end of the lecture.

After one hour of listening to some guy drone on I might have 10 lines written. I found it amazin how they could talk for so long and say nothin lol!

GuanYin

Yes, but I'd have taken a very different career path to do so.