The Dream
>> Monday, July 13, 2009
Last Friday I ordered my white coat for the White Coat Ceremony on August 14th, the last day of med school orientation. In a way it's almost surreal, as if to say "Wow, this is really happening!" I'm sure it's going to feel even more surreal the closer it gets to orientation.
At the risk of sounding cliche, being a doctor was a dream I've held for a long time. Though it wasn't until the end of high school and undergrad that I seriously considered going into medicine, the impetus and desire was there much earlier. It was one of those rosy-colored dreams where I had my own clinic with my own nurse and patients who loved the care I was providing. This iteration of the dream lingers still.
Further iterations have become progressively more ambitious. For a brief moment I had aspired to become the head of a department. I quickly dismissed that because I would never want to deal with the administrative aspects of the job description nor do I have any interest in being at the center of some hospital politics.
My most recent iteration of the dream has become quite involved. My current medical interests lay in pediatrics, medical genetics, and endocrinology. I suspect that if my current interests remain unchanged throughout med school, I'll likely have to choose between medical genetics or endocrinology - I would do my residency in pediatrics and then a fellowship in either medical genetics or endocrinology, but not both because then I would be in training for way too long.
In the current dream I would be an "academic" physician practicing medicine at a major research university. While my interest in conducting medical research has waned considerably in the last year or two, I would not mind doing research 1-2 days a week; also, being in academia keeps me updated at the forefront of cutting-edge medical research and technologies. Hopefully I would still have my own clinic and not be "bound" to work in a hospital all the time. Furthermore, if I do end up pursuing the medical genetics route through pediatrics, there's the possibility of my friend Alicia working for/with me one day as my genetic counselor.
But the main reason I would go into academic medicine is for the prospect of one day teaching a course. As I've posted before, teaching has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life thus far. If I could practice clinical medicine, stay up-to-date on research, and teach, that would be the ideal. Yet, I'm often left wondering how much I would have to sacrifice to achieve this latest iteration of my dream.
At the risk of sounding cliche, being a doctor was a dream I've held for a long time. Though it wasn't until the end of high school and undergrad that I seriously considered going into medicine, the impetus and desire was there much earlier. It was one of those rosy-colored dreams where I had my own clinic with my own nurse and patients who loved the care I was providing. This iteration of the dream lingers still.
Further iterations have become progressively more ambitious. For a brief moment I had aspired to become the head of a department. I quickly dismissed that because I would never want to deal with the administrative aspects of the job description nor do I have any interest in being at the center of some hospital politics.
My most recent iteration of the dream has become quite involved. My current medical interests lay in pediatrics, medical genetics, and endocrinology. I suspect that if my current interests remain unchanged throughout med school, I'll likely have to choose between medical genetics or endocrinology - I would do my residency in pediatrics and then a fellowship in either medical genetics or endocrinology, but not both because then I would be in training for way too long.
In the current dream I would be an "academic" physician practicing medicine at a major research university. While my interest in conducting medical research has waned considerably in the last year or two, I would not mind doing research 1-2 days a week; also, being in academia keeps me updated at the forefront of cutting-edge medical research and technologies. Hopefully I would still have my own clinic and not be "bound" to work in a hospital all the time. Furthermore, if I do end up pursuing the medical genetics route through pediatrics, there's the possibility of my friend Alicia working for/with me one day as my genetic counselor.
But the main reason I would go into academic medicine is for the prospect of one day teaching a course. As I've posted before, teaching has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life thus far. If I could practice clinical medicine, stay up-to-date on research, and teach, that would be the ideal. Yet, I'm often left wondering how much I would have to sacrifice to achieve this latest iteration of my dream.
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