When you’re at school, careers advice comes around every once in awhile. The adviser looks at your marks and makes a pronouncement based on that. So, you’re good at French? How about translation or diplomacy? Good at art? Have you considered architecture? Brilliant at sciences, especially Biology? You’re in luck – want to be a doctor?
Medical professionals are in a strange position. People expect them to know everything and yet be prepared to work for the love of it. In a true meritocracy, it could be argued that they should be the highest-paid individuals in any country. That it doesn’t work out like that shows that, to be in medicine, you need more than the right grades.
You Need Patience
Let’s get the obvious pun out of the way early, okay? Patience. Sounds like “Patients.” Which you also need, to be a doctor. Ha. Ha.
Yes. Anyway, you do need almost inexhaustible reserves of tolerance to work in medicine. People will lie to you. Ask you questions you couldn’t possibly answer. They will Google their symptoms and expect you to rubber-stamp their diagnosis and give them medication.
Through all of this, you need to be able to make sound judgements and explain them with clarity. All while you have pressure from above to treat more people, faster.
You Need Confidence
When a patient comes through the door, or you enter their ward, the chances are that they are fearful. They have symptoms and know them to be unusual. Not to put too fine a point on it, they will want to know if it’s serious.
Sometimes the answer will be “Yes”, sometimes “No”. Other times yet, it is going to be “I don’t know right now, but I know what we need to do to find out”. Not being able to give them certainty is hard for you and harder for them. But you can’t lie, and you can’t fudge any question. You can’t claim certainty where it doesn’t exist.
You Need To Maintain A Reassuring Exterior
When a patient looks at a doctor or nurse, there are things they expect to see and hope to see. A doctor who walks around looking agitated or looks lost for words won’t appear to be in command of the situation. If you look like you found your Jockey scrubs on sale in a costume shop, you won’t instil reassurance in anyone.
You’ll also, inevitably, face abuse and unfair criticism. People who are scared or otherwise emotional aren’t always reasonable. If you scowl in return, or lose your cool, it will further shake their confidence in you. You need an exceptionally thick skin and the ability to depersonalise any criticism.
You Need Knowledge
The human body and mind are both incredibly complex. A patient who reports to you with a particular symptom may be suffering from something entirely benign or potentially fatal. Making a differential diagnosis is one of the most important things you’ll do. It can require an almost inexhaustible knowledge of diagnostic criteria. And if you Google their symptoms, they’ll want to run a mile.
To be a doctor, you need all of the above, and the ability to retain them even when you have been working for eighteen straight hours. You may ask why anyone would choose this for a living. The answer is, simply, that making people better is its own reward. Along with, if you rise to the level of consultant, a very rewarding pay packet.
Are you studying to work in medicine? Share your experiences in the comments below
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