What I cannot afford is to go through 2 yrs of med school, and when the time comes to do interships, to find out I will totally suck in practice (I am not very handy).
You will do two years of "basic science" in med school, followed by two more years of clinical rotations in med school where you get a lot of hands-on experience under supervision. You're not an intern until you have completed four years of med school and graduated with an M.D. or D.O. degree.
Not everyone who's a doctor has excellent manual dexterity. I *think* this is what worries you? You'll have to do some procedures - venipuncture, lumbar puncture, etc. - but when you do them as a student, you will *always* be supervised, and when you do them as an intern or resident (interns = first post-graduate year; residents = second through final post-graduate years) you will be supervised until you have shown that you can do them effectively. Depending on what specialty you choose for your residency and career, you might not have to do much in the way of procedures.
Hence my questions above. So if you could please share your answers in regards to those, I would greatly appreciate it
(copying from above)
- are procedures such as intubation, catheter insertion, lumbar puncture, etc. (you get the idea) are first practiced on dummies before humans?
As lpressley said, there are some nifty learning lab models now, but much of what you do will be on real live people UNDER SUPERVISION. You are NEVER allowed to hurt people. But much of what you do can't be practiced on dummies or models first - it doesn't look, feel or act the same. (my classmates and I practiced venipuncture on one another)
- can you 'fail' residency i.e. - are you evaluated during your residency and how difficult is to screw up?
Residency is a learning experience and so yes, you absolutely are evaluated at every step along the way. It can be a tough learning environment but it is also meant to be one where you succeed. People who are struggling are generally helped to do better, not just failed out. Everyone screws up *some*thing in residency. If you don't mess up anything, you haven't worked hard enough or tried hard enough, or extended your abilities enough. You are *expected* to make mistakes.
I agree with others' advice: shadow a doctor and find out what s/he does. See if you can put yourself in his/her shoes. There are a LOT of books about residency, written by physicians. You might find some of them helpful. (but take them with a grain of salt) Keep listening, keep talking to people, and find out more.
You sound like you have a bad case of "fear of the unknown," and learning more about the actual experiences of med school and residency will hopefully assuage those fears. Good luck!
Mary