You just have to do it.

Anybody who is about average intelligence can do it. All it takes is discipline and commitment.

Realistically, most Americans in high school and university never had to study more than an average of 15 hours per week. In medical school studying is a full time job. Do it 60 hours a week and you can’t help but learn/know all the material.

Thank you for this. I'm considering med school, as a non-trad. I'm really intimidated, but I'm committed.

If you feel intimidated, it means you're taking it seriously and not just charging into it. That's good. It's fine to feel intimidated, especially about something that big, but you're gonna do well. Best of luck to you! :)

Thank you for your kind words 😊

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.

I would argue that 99% of us don’t actually memorize/absorb ALL of the material we’re responsible for in medical school. Otherwise why would we need to do any further training (i.e. residency)? But we do learn a lot and we learn it quickly, because that’s how our degree programs (in theory) set us up to have the solid foundational knowledge to hit the ground running as baby physicians during the first year of post-grad training. It’s during residency that real doctors are made IMO, and one of the key things that sets us apart from other healthcare professionals. Physicians have thousands of hours of clinical work before they’re allowed to practice medicine independently, and during that time is when the majority of us will truly solidify that vast knowledge base into something useful.

I see you’re non-trad thinking of applying. I once was myself. Personally, I wouldn’t let the volume of information alone scare you — there are many other things to be considered in determining if this is the right move for you. If you have the desire, the stamina, and adequate support/stability… you can make it happen. But it’s not for the faint of heart.

They really need to make med school free. They really try to make sure barely anybody gets there but there is a difference between "weeding out the bad apples" and " kneecap anyone who flinches"

It makes sense on the level of only people who really want it make it and it keeps wages high but overworked people don't do better. Like we know this about regular school but we send kids at 7am, we know 80 hours a week ends up hurting people more than it helps, but we spread doctors crazy thin. The money supposed to be from specialty not due to barely having any doctors.

I'm still not sure how he did it, but my father became a very successful physician despite dealing with undiagnosed dyslexia and not being at the top of his class. He is one of the hardest working people I know, and he's so passionate about what he does. Going to med school and doing a residency and a fellowship and all that is a massive sacrifice and will not be easy. But if you have enough determination and discipline, you can do it. It's just that you need a lot.

If you're not sure about med school, you could also consider being a PA, a nurse, a lab tech, etc. There's so many roles within medicine that need to be filled that are just as important as the doctor:)

Isnt it like how we all learned the chemical elements and bones in school but x100?

How do plumbers, pilots and lawyers retain complex information for their jobs. Same as everybody else..

And if you don’t match for residency, which is a possibility after you’ve dedicated most of your adult life to up until this point, you cannot practice as a physician in the US.

But aside from all this there are some wild tools we use. There’s this entire company called sketchy that makes cartoons to help remember microbiology. Anki is a flash card software platform that many swear by to help jam info in. These are most popularly used around board studying (our boards are taken in three steps, first one being 7 hours, second being 8 hours, and the third taking two days of 8 and 7 hours(?)).

But as stated above, the amount of medical and science knowledge in the world is constantly expanding. Doctor’s expertise is knowing how to identify an abnormality and knowing what tools to use to figure that out. And knowing exactly what to search for. Really just expert level googlers. Though, we do have this very handy website called UpToDate which is essentially medical google. Again, very handy but only because we know how to look at a patient’s complaint and distill it into a couple of words that are highly specific and unique.

Being able to jam knowledge into your head is half the battle. A really good doctor knows how to take all this knowledge and apply it dynamically.

nvm physicians, looks at london cabbies for memorization. with enough practice and dedication, your brain adapts to do what you want it to, some people take longer than others

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