I’m feeling a bit daunted right now and I was hoping for some advice. Here’s the situation; at age 27, the dissatisfaction that I was feeling with my job as a software engineer grew to the point where I knew something had to be done. After several months of consideration, I quite my job and sold my house in order to fund my pre-med course work. I am now in the second quarter of that course work, perusing my general chem and bio requirements. While I have been doing well in these classes (3.8’s), I have started to seriously question my choice to pursue medical school.
Basically, I am concerned with my ability to attend medical school and keep some degree of balance in my life. Recently, a friend who is in his residency told me that if I’m planning on going to medical school, I shouldn’t plan on having kid’s in the next 6 or seven years, and if I do, I shouldn’t plan on seeing them. This really shook me. Is medical school (and a non-surgical residency) really that insane? Are all schools like this, or are some better?
How has medical school been for you? Have you seen the out of doors in the last few years? What about relationships? My partner is a wonderful, intelligent woman. While she is very supportive of my decision to go to medical school, neither she nor I, want that decision to place restrictions on her future. Does anybody have a partner or spouse who is also in grad school while you are in medical school?
I feel a great degree of passion towards the ends that medical training delivers, but I am worried that that price for such training is too high.
Yes, you can have a life in med school. I make sure to spend time with my family and don’t regret it for an instant. I have several male classmates whose wives have had babies while in school and they definitely make time to spend with their families. I don’t have any female classmates who’ve had babies yet but that could be the next thing. This year’s graduating class has had a few babies so far this year with at least one more on the way. I know a woman who has had two babies while in med school! - one at the conclusion of first year, the other at the conclusion of third year.
New residency rules that require one day off a week and no more than 80 work hours in a week are being implemented in programs throughout the US and will become standard practice in the next few years. In just a few years I think we will have moved a long way from the “bad old days” when docs didn’t see their families for years.
Is it demanding? Yes. And it doesn’t get better once you’re out of residency - the FP doc I had as a preceptor left his house around 7am and got home, usually, after 7pm - he didn’t like it, but couldn’t figure out a way to get his work done in less time. Most non-surgical docs I know put in more than 60 hours a week routinely.
Bottom line, it’s possible.
This is one of the most discussed issues in private conversations among medical students… because none of us want to be deprived of a life, after all, and everyone worries about it. I think many people do delay kids–not impossible given your age–while others, as Mary says, do not.
Many things are potentially negotiable… shared residencies… longer time through med school in exchange for less intense class schedule… part-time work after residency… etc. Each involve some sacrifice but if your time is important to you you may find some ways of doing this. As you might imagine, the website mommd.com is full of people thinking about these sorts of issues and you may want to cruise around there and see how they’re doing it.
I went to a panel discussion at my med school on “Relationships in Medicine.” It was extremely well-attended. There were some couples in front, several with kids, who talked about the various challenges. Couples in the audience seemed to be nearly clinging to each other with their need to reassure each other that everything was going to be OK… At the end, some of us left depressed, others with a sense that it was manageable. Certainly it’s not easy.
I think the hardest thing to hear was this. The guy running the panel was a psychologist, married to an MD who was also on the panel; he puts particular focus on doing marriage counseling. He said that the hardest thing for medical folks in relationships to sacrifice–and the thing they must sacrifice–is spontaneity. This is because after all the rest of your life becomes regimented and planned out and determined by others, you want your relationship to be a sweet and unplanned and undemanding refuge. However, this leads quickly into taking your partner for granted and failing to plan really good ways of spending time and actually being really engaged with your partner. As a med student or resident, you have to plan and structure time with your partner just like you plan and structure everything else.
This was very hard for all of us to hear, but I think that it is profoundly true. This issue of the quality and type of time you’ll spend, more than time itself, is the really hard thing in my opinion. However, it is not insurmountable. And somehow doctors do manage to partner up and even to procreate…
–boston joe
Succeeding in medical school is no different than succeeding in life with a family & relationships – it is all about balance! Yes, medical school will push all sorts of boundries and truly test those balancing skills to the max. However, the skills that you have already begun to develop as a professional in a relationship thinking about children – yup, you’ve been balancing those obligations already – will serve you well in medical school. They will just have to be refined to a level heretofore unneeded.
Let me play Devil’s Advocate. You speak of the ability to maintain a relationship…my wife & I’s marriage is far stronger now that it was prior to medical school. How did we succeed? Same 4 critical elements that must be present for ANY relationship to succeed: honesty, communication, respect & trust. Just like in medicine, there is no magic potion, no magic dust, no silver bullet…it is all about balance.
From day 1, I set aside Friday evenings as “Wendy time”. I permitted myself to study, on Fridays, until Wendy arrived home from work. At that point, the books closed, and we were at one another’s disposal. It was our date night. We did not always have the $$ to go out to eat or a movie, so we frequently watched a movie that we rented or already owned. Sometimes Wendy watched me sleep as I had passed out from surviving weeks of grueling hours w/ minimal rest. Most valuable of all, we most frequently spent the time just talking. You quickly learn the critical difference b/t quantity of time, which we take for granted before medical school, and QUALITY of time. The ONLY time we violated date night was the the Fridays prior to exam blocks or finals weeks. Plus, after you’ve made it through the first few quarters, your learning becomes so much more efficient, esp by year 2, that the 1 night/week date night can easily be expanded to include at least 1 whole w/e day and occasional additional weekday evenings. During year 2, we probably had more free time together than we did when we both worked…or, maybe we had learned to maximize the quality-content such that it just felt that way.
You must set your priorities and largely stick to them. But, you must also know when those priorities must be temporarily reorganized or permanently modified. Your goal in going to medical school is obvious - to graduate. However, for me, even more important, was to remain married to Wendy. I promised her & myself, before I ever signed on the dotted line, if it began to kill “us”, then I would quit. But, the very dedication to “us” that drove me to make that promise proved to be the engine that taught me how to “balance” my obligations to school, family and to OPM (Yes, I have expended a phenominal amount of effort in building OPM; so it was & is a factor).
I went into medical school expecting to remain married to Wendy, expecting myself to earn the same ‘A’ grades I had all through Ugrad & expecting to remain as involved in the politics & leadership stuff I had so enjoyed in Ugrad. Well, the first couple of quarters taught me that all of those lofty goals were not compatible with life constricted to a 24-hour day, at least not for me. So, I retooled my priorities…I had to learn to accopt a more reasonable GPA expectation versus the 95% goal I had set for myself. I dropped my GPA expectations to a rational level, stopped volunteering to Chair every committee under the sun and maintained my marital commitment. In so doing, my learnin & retention actually improved, I was able to accomplish more with the committees where I focused my efforts and my marriage became so much stronger. How much more could you ask for?
Having kids? That is a very individual thing. Yes, it can be done…hell, we had TONS of babies born every year. That includes both wives of classmates and the ladies in my class having babies. Does it make it more difficult? Yes. Does doing so make it impossible to graduate? No…it just means you’ll have to adjust your priorities.
Spouse/SO in school too? Yep, can be done. Several of my classmates & myself had spouses in Ugrad, grad school, med school, vet school, dental school, working professionally and functioning as a stay-at-home parent. Again, it all harkens back priorities, balance, dedication & malleability. For every person who tell you that any of these are “impossible”, I can easily point to a number of people who have ignored the naysayers and gone out and have done it. The skills of balance, dedication to your priorities and the wisdom to know when to modify them and malleability will go ergs to assure that you succeed in medical school with your relationships intact.
I hope this helps you out.
| QUOTE (djkammer @ Feb 12 2003, 03:13 PM) |
| I’m feeling a bit daunted right now and I was hoping for some advice. Here’s the situation; at age 27, the dissatisfaction that I was feeling with my job as a software engineer grew to the point where I knew something had to be done. After several months of consideration, I quite my job and sold my house in order to fund my pre-med course work. I am now in the second quarter of that course work, perusing my general chem and bio requirements. While I have been doing well in these classes (3.8’s), I have started to seriously question my choice to pursue medical school. Basically, I am concerned with my ability to attend medical school and keep some degree of balance in my life. Recently, a friend who is in his residency told me that if I’m planning on going to medical school, I shouldn’t plan on having kid’s in the next 6 or seven years, and if I do, I shouldn’t plan on seeing them. This really shook me. Is medical school (and a non-surgical residency) really that insane? Are all schools like this, or are some better? How has medical school been for you? Have you seen the out of doors in the last few years? What about relationships? My partner is a wonderful, intelligent woman. While she is very supportive of my decision to go to medical school, neither she nor I, want that decision to place restrictions on her future. Does anybody have a partner or spouse who is also in grad school while you are in medical school? I feel a great degree of passion towards the ends that medical training delivers, but I am worried that that price for such training is too high. |
Hi there,
The question that you may want to ask yourself is: "What do I truly want out of life and what am I willing to do to achieve my goals?" If your standard for living a fulfilling life is spending 24-hours each day with your children, then you are not going to have a career in anything. What are you going to do when your children are grown and into their lives? I promise you that they will not be interested in having you attempt to live through them. The point to this is that medicine, medical school, residency and family life is not an "all or none" proposition.
Last night, I was listening to one of my chief residents chat with his young daughter. She paged him to say good night. This chief is married to a pediatric cardiologist so they have a two physician family. This chief resident in surgery more than shares the child-rearing duties with his wife and welcomes the calls from his daughter. He asked about her day in school and reminded her that he might have a "Valentine" for her when he came home. He also reminded her that he was going to have to sleep in the hospital at night. It's not an amazing thing that he has two well-adjusted children who are very sure that they are loved and appreciated because he makes his family a priority.
Coming from a family of physicians, I realized very early that I didn't need huge quantities of time from my patents but I needed good quality time from my parents. I never felt like I had to vie for my patents' attention or compete for their time. I knew how to page my father, aunt and uncle whenever I needed something. I probably had better communication with the folks who were important in my life than folks who grow up in a more traditional setting.
Did it make a huge difference to me if we celebrated Christmas on December 26th rather than the 25th if one parent was on call on the 25th? No, it made no difference because we always had the best Christmas celebrations that went on for weeks.
It isn't the quantity of time but the quality of time and attention that you give your relationships that really count. My fiance has me 100% when I am away from the hospital. When I am on duty, I totally appreciate his calls to break my day.
You have to decide what you want and what kind of balance in your life makes sense. Medicine and specifically surgery has given me options. I can't think of doing anything else.
Natalie
Some of this depends on the way the school you go to schedules classes and all the other things (clinic tutorials, labs, etc) they’ll want you to do. The administration is fond of saying you “only” have X number of classes, but this is misleading. If your class has a lab component that you will be tested on as well as material persented in lecture, then you have, in reality, two classes - lecture AND lab.
At our school, they have the schedule planned to keep you in class and lab most of the day, starting at 8-9AM and ending anywhere from 3-4:30PM. So, you have lectures, labs, and all the rest in that time, and then you have to go study (memorize) all that, which for all but the truly gifted, means studying until 10PM or so - later if an exam is looming since there will be material to review.
Now, good time management skills help, and if you didn’t really develop these before, you certainly will in med school. I’ve told other pre-meds that if they’re used to taking a full-time undergrad load of credits and doing the work necessary to get A’s (usually 70% of total points in science classes), imagine doubling the workload AND retaining that level of performance.
I’m NOT trying to be discouraging here, because obviously it CAN be done. But go in with your eyes open as to how much work there will be!