Expand your horizons! Take a moment to peruse
the list of descriptions of health careers. These have been divided
into the traditional health careers (medicine, veterinary medicine,
and dentistry), the major Allied Health Professions, and other
Health Careers options. Medicine is becoming more highly specialized
and many of the non-traditional areas are expanding enormously. Many
students enter Fort Lewis College with the idea of becoming a
physician, and through ignorance do not consider the many options
available today. Educate yourself! The health care delivery team has
many more members than the traditional primary care physician.
Medicare has become very specialized. Consider your options, and
decide what you really want to do.
Many of the health professions require
rigorous coursework, and some entering students may not have the
necessary interest or motivation to enter these fields. It is not
enough that your mother or father or great-aunt Martha want you to
grow up to be a doctor. It must be what you want for yourself, and
you must want it more than anything else. You will save yourself,
your family, your advisors and your teachers considerable time and
unhappiness if you examine your motives closely before you embark on
a poorly-chosen course of study. As you move through your program
you should continue to ask yourself if this career is what you
really want, and if it isn't, don't be afraid to change your goals.
No matter how intellectually gifted you may be, you will not succeed
in achieving a career in any field unless you are determined and
absolutely serious in your pursuit.
You should also examine your idea of what a
traditional health-career practice is going to be like. Some
pre-medical students suffer from a romanticized vision of a doctor's
life; they have watched too much television and seen too few
real-life doctors in action. It is not a glamorous profession.
People are rarely at their charming best when they are sick, and
they cannot be relied upon to display their symptoms only between
nine and five, Monday through Friday. Physicians have very little
time to call their own; they are at the mercy of their beepers when
they are away from the office or hospital. Veterinarians must deal
daily with the trauma of putting down abandoned and abused animals,
or with the difficulties inherent in controlling the emotions of
distraught human clients. Personal and family life inevitably
suffer.
Nor do physicians routinely perform the
heroics that fill the pre-medical student's day-dreams. As a doctor
you will spend more time dealing with people suffering from
indigestion than you will saving lives. You will also sometimes
have to explain to patients that they suffer from something that you
and your colleagues are unable to cure. You will have to tell
grieving parents that their child is going to die and that nothing
you can do will prevent it. Worse yet, you will have to live with
the knowledge that some of your patients died, whom you might have
saved had you been quicker to make the diagnosis, had you been more
skillful as a surgeon, had you been just a little smarter or not
quite so tired. . . . .
If you are preparing for one of the
traditional health fields, you probably anticipate making a lot of
money, and this part of your vision may be realistic. If,
however, you consider the investment in time and money involved in
obtaining a D.V.M, D.D.S., or M.D. degree, the rewards do not seem
so great. You have four years of college, four years of
professional school (where the tuition is usually astronomical), and
then a year of internship and several years of residency (where you
are severely overworked and considerably underpaid) before you can
even approach the pot of gold at the end of your rainbow. And
then you have the costs of setting up an office. Most health fields,
particularly the traditional ones, afford comfortable salaries; but
don't neglect the cost to you - both fiscal and emotional.
