It’s simple to say it takes a lot of discipline and commitment but let me expand more on that.

Learning the medical knowledge is truly the easy part. There are a lot of sacrifices along the way that fall into the category of commitment.

Entering medical training is essentially a 7-11 year long commitment depending on your specialty, or possibly longer, that once you start is very difficult to remove yourself from. If you’ve already a second career and roots planted somewhere, recognize that there is a huge financial opportunity cost in losing out on 11 years of pay and investment, in order to pursue this degree. It’s also 11 years of possibly dragging your family around the country.

I don’t know where you are in the application process but even before Med school begins, you need to have fulfilled some undergraduate prerequisites in freshman and sophomore level science and writing courses. If you had foresight it may already be done with your bachelors the first time around. For others going back to school, this is a year of your life just taking these courses. Then you have to take the MCAT which is a typical standardized test, where a fairly large amount of people get weeded out. This is also something most people would study at minimum 1 month for and it’s not unheard of to prep for 6 months or more.

Let’s say you apply to 30 or however many Med schools. It’s very competitive. There may be a lot of pressure to get accepted into someplace close to home, especially if your SO has an established career, or your kids are in school. Getting accepted into only one place, halfway across the country, can put a lot of people into depression and shame, feeling like they’ve failed their family and now have to uproot their whole life to move them across the country.

Ok now the 4 years of Med school where you learn all the things is supposed to actually be the easy part. Except the USMLEs which are extremely high stakes board exams. Most people who’ve attended a university are used to the concept of a final exam after a 4 month semester. For a lot of people, a board exam that tests your cumulative knowledge for the last 2 years is very high stakes and stressful. It takes a massive amount of discipline to study something during your first month of school, and then continually revisit it during the next 24 months all the while you are learning new material along the way.

So fourth year rolls around and you have to apply for the residency match. You may not get the specialty you want. It can be really defeating to feel like you’ve invested 4+ years already and still you may not get the specialty you want, and it’s easy to fall into a bad place when you feel like everything you’ve done is for nothing. And the same issue as applying to Med school comes up. Maybe you wanna be in X location, and there’s a lot of pressure. But then match at Y which is halfway across the country. Uproot your life again, and there’s a lot of shame and disappointment.

Then as a resident you have to work your butt off for 3-7 years, inhumane hours, 80h per week and 24+ hour shifts. Relationships are tested. You don’t see your kids that much. You’re getting paid peanuts.

Then at the end of it all, you’ve dragged your family across the country a couple times over the last 11 years. Maybe got a divorce along the way. Maybe didn’t see your kids that much. Lost out on 11 years of income, accumulated 200k of debt. And now for the rest of your life you get to be a physician that has to work “call” shifts meaning you’ll work holidays and nights forever.

So all of that is to say, there is so so so much more to consider than how you’re gonna learn all the medical knowledge. The discipline, commitment, and the sacrifices made along the way. The medical knowledge is really the relatively easy part.