Tuesday, October 25, 2011

3/3 of the depressing future: Attendings tell us about their lives

(attending: a physician who has finished all training. So actually a doctor.) 

So we've learned about how terrible Step 1 is, how terrible clerkships are, and how we've learned how terrible it is even after we're actually doctors.*

There was a panel of docs, one of whom was a doctor in his last year of orthopedics residency. They told us the following things:

"If you stand still, you will get passed over." - 5th year orthopedic surgery resident

"When I was a resident (in internal medicine) at one point all the attendings I worked with had been divorced. I'm now divorced." - pulmonologist

"I have four kids and just went through a divorce." - urogynecological surgeon

"I get home around 10pm every day and get up around 5am." - either the urogynecological surgeon or the orthopedic surgery resident, I can't remember which

"I leave work at 5:30 every day." - a radiologist. At this point all the students decided they want to be radiologists.

At the end of the panel, the career services coordinator sensed the mood of the event and had to beg the panel for encouraging closing thoughts.

*unless you're a radiologist and leave work at 5:30pm every day.

3 comments:

marci_b said...

That is pretty terribly depressing. It also makes Grey's Anatomy seem all the more realistic.

Bethany Lumbert said...

Wow. That sounded so uplifting. Why so many divorces? Keep your chin up, Chen! :)

melonontwotendrils said...

oh no. Are you thinking of your specialization yet? Or is it too early yet?


I read an article in the New York Times I can't even remember when, and they said that the U.S. needs more doctors but there aren't enough medical schools in the country to churn out more doctors.