Differences Between Studying and Practising Medicine

whatsthecraic

Just wondering if there's a big disparity between studying medicine as a student and being an actual doctor. I come from an engineering background and am considering returning to study as a graduate. One issue I'm having with committing to the decision is whether or not after beginning to study that I would know for sure if its definitely for me.

I found with the engineering course that students were kept interested by being presented with problems of a great variety that might only take an hour to solve. So the turnover and variety was great. However, in industry, I found that problems could take months to solve, and that no engineering was necessary, just a bit of cop on, the common sense to question why things were happening and then to approach it with a relevant solution. Any opinions much appreciated!

First Aid Ireland

I think I never really got a feel for the pressures of life on the wards when I was a student. I saw the harassed looking junior docs, but it still came as a hell of a shock to me when I was being bombarded with new very sick patients 16 hours into a shift.

I spent my clinical years doing very thorough clinical histories on the wards which took a very long time. I spent a lot of my clinical career doing very focused histories.

I also found that medical school gives very little exposure to people who aren't sick. One of the key skills in a lot of front line specialties lies in differentiating the sick from the "unsick", for want of a better phrase. in med school you just see very sick people and I don't think we get enough exposure to the process of deciding somebody doesn't need to be in hospital.

Though all in all the system and the training generally works. Has done for many years. So I imagine we're doing most of it right.