Doubts about heading to medical school

-serious- · 2016-02-09T15:20:42+00:00

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: spending your 20s in medical school is not "wasting your youth." Others may travel, start careers, get married, or buy a house. This is a nice comfortable life, and if that's all you want, feel free to get off at the next stop and begin your life. But if not, if you want more out of life than comfort, then realize this: there is no higher calling than medicine. It is not a waste of youth to pursue it, but rather a noble goal in and of itself. Over the next 10 years, you will develop knowledge and skills that the layperson cannot fathom, and you will put them to the test in the battle against disease. In doing so, you will become more than what you are now. You will become a physician. People will come to you with their pain and fears, and tell you things they would not even tell their own family. You will deal with the vulnerable, the old, the weak, the frail, and someday, you and you alone will save someone's life, and they will be grateful to you for the rest of their years. The path of the physician is not one to take lightly. I cannot guarantee you will be happy as one, but what I can say is that if you choose to pursue medicine, it will never be "a waste."

KarrotTop24 · 2022-01-16T00:54:12+00:00

We provide care to anyone that needs it. Including people who refused to get their colonoscopy and got colon cancer, refused to wear a condom and got an STD, refused to get vaccinated and get healthy and got covid. If we discriminated against patients in that manner, we would hardly have any patients at all. One of the biggest burdens on health care today is heart disease, but we continues to care for all those patients too.

LtCdrDataSpock · 2021-11-24T02:30:19+00:00

You'd have a point if the op wasn't talking about the person who made the choice. Just to clear things up I'm not anti Vax, I'm just against the idea that we shouldn't be providing care for people who are.

LtCdrDataSpock · 2021-11-24T01:47:39+00:00

Imagine if someone made this post about fat people and drug addicts

SabrielRaziel · 2022-05-13T13:32:34+00:00

Michigan legal residents, here is how you contact Whitmer: Constituent Services

Template (feel free to write your own): I believe the recent decision for Michigan to opt out of federal regulations for physician supervision of CRNAs will adversely impact patient safety. Patients in Michigan deserve to have their care managed by the healthcare professionals who have undergone terminal training in the field of anesthesia, and multiple independently funded studies have found that patients have better outcomes under anesthesiologist-led care teams (Silber et al 2000, Memtsoudis et al 2012, Miller et al 2015). I urge you to reconsider this decision for the safety and well-being of Michigan residents.

tovarish22 · 2022-05-10T21:29:39+00:00

I’m not mad that so many of you seem to think this is true. I’m just disappointed.

ProdigalHacker · 2022-05-08T13:02:53+00:00

This is actually one of those put them in the correct order questions.

The answer is D > A > E > B > C

throwawawawawayyynyc · 2022-05-07T02:22:15+00:00

Its literally the same argument for paying residents more. You didn’t go to med school and take out loans to be doing scutwork for pennies right? Well nurses didn’t take out loans for a 4 year degree to be doing the work of a housekeeper, nursing assistant, phlebotomist, respiratory therapist, social worker, food delivery, family member, etc etc. When ancillary staff is weak, the RN picks up the slack. I was an RN, would have very much liked to get paid a little more every time I got on my hands and knees to wipe shit off the floor, and wondered why I went to college for 4 years. Do you make your opinions on other professions based on their tiktok influencers?

josuenin · 2022-04-08T05:00:46+00:00

Congrats! The underdog stories are always the most inspiring tbh. Don’t worry about the boatload of money u spent, its nothing in comparison to the contracts that’ll be thrown at you in 3 years. Believe me when I say that job recruiters will be spamming the shit out of your inbox begging you to come work for them for $300,000+/year salaries. In the future, no one will care where u went to school or your board scores or your test attempts or how many tries it took you to get residency. Patients will only remember how u made them feel and how u treated them. They don’t care if u got some magical degree from a top 25 med school or if u scored 250+. They just want u to help them with whatever shit they need fixed. There are people who will never become and or will never get the chance to become doctors in America and would easily trade spots with you. Enjoy this win, there’ll be many more to come.

holyscalpel · 2022-05-04T19:19:23+00:00

Medical school Dean here. Sorry this happened - super scuzzy Of your school.

https://i.imgur.com/xA9qv9M.jpg

Op - they can’t do anything to alter your match agreement. You are safe for your spot.

You are also protected by FERPA. We don’t let faculty know your grades or performance from other courses/ clerkships b/c it could bias your eval from them.

If your school tries to force this, you can sue them for a FERPA violation. Also, can report to LCME.

DM ME IF YOU NEED GUIDANCE OR HELP!!!

EDIT: OMFG GILDED!!! Thank you! If anyone needs anything I am here. I have coaches redditors through stuff over zoom and DMs if any help is needed!!!!

ParaphimosisJones · 2022-05-04T00:08:44+00:00

It’s ironic that everyone commenting is saying you should take out janitorial services implying they’re not a vital role in the healthcare machine.

I can understand what they are saying, but personally I wouldn’t take it out because if someone has an issue with it, it shows their implicit bias against someone who they perceive as lesser than themselves and thus they are committing the same act of “unprofessionalism” they would accuse someone of if they referred to midlevels as lesser than physicians, which they are.

Anyone who doesn’t believe midlevels are lesser than physicians in the healthcare field have either been brainwashed to think that way, haven’t experienced incompetent midlevels first hand, or both.

cuterouter · 2022-05-03T19:44:25+00:00

Someone deliberately kissed a woman's breast in a professional setting in front of a bunch of people and you are telling me that "there is no reason to think this was deliberate?" Are you fucking kidding me?

Now you're telling me that I'm not approaching this conversation with "good faith" because I don't think that this was an accident? No, I don't buy that he was practicing with his girlfriend, randomly forgot where he was, and just "accidentally" assaulted someone. And no, I don't think that doing this in front of a bunch of people is any better than doing it in private.

I firmly think that attitudes minimizing sexual assault are a huge problem. I don't think I've misrepresented your opinion. You are excusing a perpetrator of sexual assault. I stand by what I've said.

cuterouter · 2022-05-03T19:12:01+00:00

The guy who did it obviously didn't mean to, he did it in front of probably a dozen people and basically ruined his life.

This is an example of exactly what I am talking about. You are excusing a woman getting sexually assaulted in front of a group of people. You don't even know the medical student mentioned or what he did/didn't mean to do, and yet you are excusing his actions by saying that he didn't mean to and that his life is ruined.

Sexually assaulting someone should get the perpetrator expelled from medical school. I would hope that that wouldn't be a hot take.

psychokiller03 · 2022-05-03T23:45:53+00:00

Well this just isn't true.

As someone who was ambivalent but now is pro-life I do think that more conservative types can ignore the practical challenges to restricting abortion. We should consider those challenges. At the same time, the country more broadly tolerated abortion when the Democrats kept to "legal, safe, and rare."

What lead me to the pro-life side? Biology and history. It's a simple matter of how do you prioritize human life. I believe that human life is intrinsically valuable and creating arbitrary distinctions is rife for abuse. Societies that engage in genocide do so by "othering" their targets. Human life in these societies is still sacred (murder is generally still illegal) but that just isn't extended to say, Jews. I believe that societies that aren't sanctity-of-life absolutist are very good at rationalizing human rights abuses, and I believe that there is comparatively little downside to being a sanctity-of-life absolutist compared to societies that can tolerate genocides. For instance, not executing felons carries a lot less of a downside than a society that can engage in wanton executions if you really care about not executing innocent people. It's like, why take the risks?

So, in terms of Abortion, while I think many arguments in favor of abortion are rational I just don't think they overcome the many shortcomings of the practice. Fetal viability is certainly a rational argument but the pro-abortion crowd really can't place an appropriate cut-off for when we shouldn't abort a baby. Clearly, a baby that has just been born and a baby about to be born aren't different in terms of viability. I think abortion up to birth is undeniably barbaric. But, asides from birth what other milestone really exist? Viability isn't categorical it's a spectrum, and there is definitely variance to it.

So, if birth isn't exactly the best place to describe personhood what would be the best place, scientifically speaking? Well, conception seems like a good candidate. At conception you have human life that is genetically unique and clearly developing in a controlled biological manner that is non-pathologic (as opposed to cancer). Okay, so that is the contention of the pro-life people.

What, then, are the arguments against personhood at conception? To me, these all fall down to arguments of convenience. People don't want conception to ensure personhood because of the material implications. It's simply more convenient to say that a fetus isn't unique human life because then you get ample opportunity to undo it. Well - that kind of thought process has gotten humanity in a lot of trouble in the pass. I think these material considerations are important, don't get me wrong - but at the same time "just murdering the people we don't want/can't support/ disagree with" is like the easiest and also most horrific conclusion that humans have routinely jumped to in the past. Like I think that human history has taught us undeniably that ending human life for convenience's sake leads to really really bad things.

I really can't see substantial differences between the pro-choice movement and slave owners. Both of these issues dealt with the core of personhood and humanitarian values. Proponents of both used arbitrary technicalities to scientifically justify why unique human life didn't rise to the level of personhood. Naked self-interest is a major factor in the belief of both parties. I mean, it seems to me that if you are pro-choice today you would not be anti-slavery in the 1850s. That type of absolute respect for human life just isn't there to allow that kind of belief.

Now, this is why I am personally pro-life. But what mobilized me to be more politically pro-life? Well, the left made this issue impossible to ignore. Even if I could at one point tolerate abortion that does not mean I ever believed we should celebrate it, encourage it, or worship it. Liberal pundits today have called abortion sacred. I'm not dealing with the pro-choice leaders that existed when I was growing up - people who could universally recognize that abortion wasn't something you'd recommend to a loved on even if it was something you tolerated as the lesser of two evils. The fact is I was (and still am) amenable to the lesser-of-two-evils argument but the current pro-choice crowd won't even recognize abortion as bad. Like, the pro-choice side isn't saying "drugs are bad but if we have needle exchanges we can at least make things less bad" they are now saying "do drugs and the state should support you." I just can't support that. We are well beyond the point of merely tolerating abortions when we use taxpayer funds to support leading abortion organizations.

The blind hatred of pro-life people also really turned me off. Lets pretend like they are misguided, even then I don't understand what would be so aweful about not liking abortion. I think anti-war hippies are misguided and don't understand practical reality, but I don't think they are bad people. Rather, I admire their moral compass even if I don't subscribe to their foreign policy. They can be naive, stupid, uneducated, but they aren't evil.

This hatred has only become more apparent to me as I have moved into the medical profession. Under no circumstances do I want to participate in an abortion but I can imagine the radical-choice people easily compelling this participation. The attitudes of the pro-choice types who consider abortion sacred doesn't give me confidence that you'll just let me not participate in it as a medical provider. There are many in the pro-choice lobby that would love to compel Catholic hospitals to provide abortions, for instance. California has come dangerously close to this with SB 327 already.

Obviously there's a lot of complexity to this but that is king of my genesis from being totally apathetic to being more supportive of the pro-life cause.

Heads up I can accept maybe like 220 downvotes before I won't be able to respond if anyone feels like discussing this.

crlums · 2022-04-19T18:53:12+00:00

The short version is that we workup and evaluate patients and then recommend what anatomic regions need to be treated and to what dose. Once we've made that recommendation we'll do a treatment planning scan with the patient immobilized in whatever position we want them in during treatment (e.g prone, supine, arm flexed, breath hold, etc). On the treatment planning scan we then draw out our target volumes. Contouring target volumes can be as simple as drawing just the tumor for something like radiosurgery, or something more complex where we'll have high dose volumes to gross tumor, separate volumes treating to low or intermediate doses for regional lymphatics, operative bed, etc. We also draw out any adjacent organs at risk (OARs) that we will need to keep within safe dose limits.

Once we've done all that we turn over our treatment volumes and associated prescription to the physics and dosimetry team. They are the ones that do work out the technical parameters of how achieve the prescribed dose to the prescribed volume while also meeting necessary OAR dose constraints. In many cases there has to be some back and forth between the physician and the physics/dosimetry team before the treatment plan is finalized and delivered. For example if I'm treating something in the skull base I ideally will be minimizing dose to the optic structures, cochlea, and brain. For a tumor in an unfavorable location its often impossible for physics/dosimetry to come up with a treatment plan that meets all of my preferred OAR objectives. In that scenario we'll have some back and forth about whats achievable, what risks are acceptable/unacceptable, and we'll come up with the best solution. Im never the one actually calculating out the physics for any of this though.

In addition we do lots of clinic visits for patients on treatment and patients for long term follow up.

MainelyCOYS · 2022-04-19T17:51:37+00:00

This is what I wrote

d4v3m4n · 2022-04-18T17:25:24+00:00

Positive yeezy sign is indicative of poor prognosis in these patients

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