7 WAYS TO HELP YOU BACK YOUR LOVE FOR MEDICAL PROFESSION
Every month I have the opportunity to guide new medical students. Seeing the students’ shyness, fear, and confusion reminded me of myself in the past.
I felt shocked when I went from being a very confident, good student to entering medical school, when it seemed like everyone was better than me.
I used to feel sorry for myself and blame my fate because my family background wasn’t as good as my friends.
I blamed it on circumstances. situation, I’m the first person in my family to study medicine so I don’t know anyone. I don’t have any umbrella, I don’t have any support from my relatives and family about medicine.
Meanwhile, my friends are so good maybe it’s because of their family, their parents are doctors so they must know a lot about the medical environment.
Then I think English is not my mother tongue so I will definitely encounter many difficulties and I’m sure That’s my loss.
I also felt depressed and I lost my motivation. The fire to pursue the medical field is also gradually weakening.
I feel like each passing day is very heavy and tiring. Go to school in the morning, come home in the afternoon, just review your lessons, then cram in a bunch of information that I feel has no practical application for me in my current life.
It took me a lot of time to get over that feeling and that period.
That’s why today I want to share 7 things I learned during that time with medical students or everyone who is losing love. with the medical profession.
1. Remember why you pursued medicine
I always felt like I was a fake. I feel inferior to my classmates. Everyone in class is very good, everyone knows many things but I don’t know anything.
I also have the feeling that I don’t belong in the medical field, maybe this is the wrong choice, and it’s not suitable for me. I looked around at my friends who had stable jobs, had families, and started building a stable financial base for themselves.
At that time, I had to go to school. Every day I feel very skeptical about whether or not I can pursue a career in medicine.
However, what makes me continue to persevere in pursuing it to the end are the seemingly simple things.
For example, helping a patient feel less pain, helping a patient feel less depressed, or controlling blood sugar better, or losing a few pounds. Or the moments when I connect with patients and they share with me the difficulties they are facing.
It’s nothing big, it’s not a big success, or any awards are too big, but these simple things make me feel warm and give me the fire to continue sticking with the profession.
That’s exactly what I’m telling you. If you intend to give up, then you should contemplate and rethink the moments and reasons why you want to pursue medicine.
Because if we still love, we can still continue.
2. Accept the current difficult reality.
The second thing I learned is that in order to overcome difficulties, we first need to accept the current reality and determine how difficult our situation is.
After the initial shock when I first entered medical school, I accepted, accepted that studying medicine is very difficult, more difficult than anything I have experienced before.
And I have clearly determined that to be successful, to overcome challenges is not easy.
I have to accept that my previous glorious days have ended. end.
I may have graduated as valedictorian from college in the past and received many prestigious honors when I was in college, but when I enter medical school, I will start over from zero.
And just because I was successful in the past doesn’t mean I will continue to be successful in the future, in medical school, and I can’t rest on my laurels.
I will. must continue to try, and must try even more than before.
3. Learn to change to adapt.
I realized the harsh truth that in order to be successful in medical school, I need to change a lot, from thinking, to habits, how to receive information, how to study, how to remember and how to take tests.
We all have to change.
Our old habits can help us easily get good grades and succeed in the lower classes. But when I entered medical school, these habits didn’t help me go any further. It requires me to change, to completely transform myself to be able to go further.
For example, when I was in college, I studied biochemistry in one semester, but when I entered medical school, all the huge knowledge of biochemistry was compressed into 1 month.
So the strategies I learned to use in college could no longer be applied when I studied medicine. anymore.
Then when I entered clinical practice, it had different requirements. Every month I have to practice in a different specialty, and when I do this internship, my scores are assessed very subjectively, usually from teachers, seniors, or older students.
And each time I move to different specialties, each teacher has a different temperament and the nurses have different requirements.
And I feel that this is a series of challenges that I must change, must be flexible to adapt, so as not to fail.
4. Find ways to change your surroundings.
The medical environment in the US and in Vietnam both has its dark corners, and there are many things that need to be changed to help make the lives of medical students and doctors better.
Maybe you think that you are just an ordinary student, an ordinary doctor with a salary, and your voice does not have much weight. But in any organization or system, truly meaningful changes must come from the people inside.
A simple example is that in the US, there is a law called Medical Resident Work Hours (a law that limits the working hours of resident doctors). This law stipulates that each resident doctor can only work a maximum average of 80 hours/week, with at least 10 hours of rest between each shift.
This law was enacted in 2003, based on the request as well as the voices and aspirations of many medical students and resident doctors as well as attending doctors.
Before this law was introduced in the US, resident doctors worked very long hours and this greatly affected the health and psychology of doctors as well as health safety for patients.
Because when a doctor works for such a long time, it is very difficult to think clearly and it is easy to make mistakes during the work process, and mistakes in the medical industry can lead to very serious consequences.
And it is thanks to the efforts, as well as the courage to speak up and give opinions of the doctors who have gone before us, that people like me, and the doctors who come after us, will have success. a better working environment and limit unnecessary errors.
5. Always cheer yourself up.
I have to say that the 4 years I studied Medicine and 3 years of residency training were the most difficult times in my life, and many times I just wanted to forget these times because it was so painful.
Studying Medicine was very difficult. And one thing that makes me even sadder is that I felt very lonely during that time.
My loved ones, from my parents, my lover and later my husband, and my close friends, they do not understand the difficulties that I have to go through.
They know that I study Medicine, they also think “Oh! Studying Medicine is also difficult”, but they cannot fully understand if they are not in it. industry.
And I can’t explain and share with anyone the feelings I have. Because when I say it, sometimes they don’t understand. And because of that, I feel very lonely.
There were times when I was mistaken in a situation where I felt I doubted myself a lot.
When I was in year 1 and year 2, I was miserable like year 1 and year 2 where I had to cram a huge amount of knowledge. In year 3 and year 4, there were stories and difficulties when I had to work with patients.
Then there was a time when I was very sad because I was wrongly accused.
Teachers have comments that I feel are too harsh, and I’m not that bad to be said like that, then I feel very angry, and I can’t do anything, and I just bury myself in the blanket and cry.
Sometimes I don’t dare to cry, when I cry I feel embarrassed and weak, and don’t want the people around me to know what I’m doing. encountering such difficulties again.
Then later I became a resident doctor, at that time I was a doctor and I had other worries, I had feelings like
- Oh! I don’t know if my clinical assessments are accurate or not?
- Have I made any mistakes that will affect the patient?
- Then I feel like I understand enough?
I always feel like I’m not as excellent as I expected want.
That’s why I had to fight and cheer myself up a lot because just one moment of weakness can lead to being swept up in negative emotions.
Therefore, my message to you is to pay attention to your own emotions, understand them clearly, acknowledge their existence, but don’t let them control you.
6. Connect with like-minded friends.
I used to feel like maybe there was something wrong with me, because I saw my classmates being super like that.
And that made me feel self-conscious and closed off. I don’t dare connect with other friends because I don’t want them to know my weaknesses. I don’t want them to look down on me.
I remember one time I boldly got to know a girl in class. The person in the past I felt was very talented, every time the teacher asked me something, she would raise her hand to speak and was always full of enthusiasm, full of confidence, always positive.
After a period of getting to know her and studying with her, she once shared with me that she was actually very depressed and had to take medication to treat it. Most recently, she had just failed a class and was having to retake it.
At that time, I was surprised. I really didn’t expect her to be having such difficulties. From what I saw just on the surface, I thought she was very successful and much better than me, but why was she so shallow?
From there, I realized that there are things that look like that on the outside but on the inside are not like that.
I realized that perhaps other medical students and doctors are also facing the same difficulties that I have been facing, and they just don’t say it out loud. stop. Just because we don’t hear those things doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
And thanks to that, I have become bolder and more confident to connect with friends and teachers to ask for help.
Thanks to having a companion, I feel less lonely and have more enthusiasm to try.
7. Everything has its own reason.
The last thing I want to tell you is that the mixed and somewhat negative emotions you are having or had when you were a medical student or a doctor, these emotions are very normal. People in this situation also have these feelings.
You may be sad, you may be bored, but don’t doubt yourself, because everything in life I believe happens for a reason.
For me, I feel that the difficulties I have encountered, the times I fell into depression or discouragement, are the times I understand more about myself. myself, and from there I grew up and became more mature.
And thanks to these things, I feel like I can sympathize with my patients more, so that I can walk beside them on the path they are on, instead of going in front to entice them or following behind to push them.
They help me understand the patients’ mixed emotions when they have to try to make a choice, or feel a sense of loss of faith. on myself or the feeling of failure.
In other words, my experiences have helped me become a better doctor and I believe they will help you too.
Please comment “yes” if this article is useful to you.
Dr. Christina Nguyen
The Phoenix Medical Academy
