{"id":398,"date":"2014-09-04T08:30:07","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T12:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/?p=398"},"modified":"2014-09-03T16:08:02","modified_gmt":"2014-09-03T20:08:02","slug":"the-value-of-medicine-amidst-all-that-debt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/the-value-of-medicine-amidst-all-that-debt\/","title":{"rendered":"The Value of Medicine, Amidst all That Debt"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s so unfair that you have to pay for your flights for residency interviews!\u201d George, my fianc\u00e9, was indignant.\u00a0 \u201cIn addition to hotels, applications, and everything else!\u201d I looked over, surprised at his outburst.\u00a0 It was justice, not stinginess that lit the fire in his eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cDear, we pay for everything when it comes to medical education.\u201d I said. It made sense to me\u2014that\u2019s the way medical training worked after all.\u00a0 Debt, debt, debt, and years later, a paying job.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut why? It doesn\u2019t seem right that corporations pay for potential employees\u2019 travel fare and hotel on their interview days and universities arrange for PhD candidates to come and see their programs, but medical schools and residency programs won\u2019t. The way I see it, that\u2019s unprofessional.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unprofessional? Medicine is all about professionalism. And tradition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s just the way things are,\u201d I told George.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From what I can see, medicine leans heavily on prestige and people to entice candidates to its programs. It can\u2019t afford (and perhaps doesn\u2019t need) perks to do the job for them.\u00a0 But George has a point.\u00a0 In a world where money is valued so highly, the medical field remains a privileged one.\u00a0 Why is that so?\u00a0 The answer is complicated.<\/p>\n

My first year of medical school concluded less than a week ago.\u00a0 I think back to the $70,000+ spent on my one-quarter-MD and part of me cringes a bit.\u00a0 It is a well-known (and well-accepted) struggle that enormous loans are often necessary to make it through the four years of medical school.\u00a0 Yet, even with the MD in our hands, at least one year of internship and, more likely than not, another two to five years of residency is needed to practice.\u00a0 Often, physicians-in-training will continue on to do a fellowship and subspecialize in their field, which can take another one to three years.\u00a0 And the cost of applying to residency?\u00a0 It is not unheard of for medical students to take out additional loans during their fourth year for the sole purpose of \u201cresidency and relocation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond the monetary expenses of medical education, there is often an underlying complaint of lost time in medical school, something that is a mix of lost sleep and lost opportunities for making money, exploring the world, and even, of developing relationships.\u00a0 Somehow, it seems that there is the notion that medical education has a way of sucking the marrow out of life.\u00a0 The best years, prime years often in one\u2019s 20s, are spent studying in libraries or wrapped up in cases in the hospital.<\/p>\n

Still, a large part of me is idealistic.\u00a0 I see the pursuit of medicine as inherently sacrificial.\u00a0 Student doctors spend their time buckled down in books or the wards, learning how to bring others into health and wellness.\u00a0 I admit to oftentimes believing that it should be so\u2014that in this field of caring and healing, our focus should always be on the other, the sick patient, and not on ourselves and our own sacrifice and debt.<\/p>\n

I told this to my friend Arnav and he laughed at me. \u201cYou know, it would be way easier to get into medical school if being a doctor wasn\u2019t a high-paying job.\u201d<\/p>\n

I thought about it and after a while, I nodded.\u00a0 I guess it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlus, there are no poor doctors; only doctors in debt.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hmm.\u00a0 True again.\u00a0 Indeed, it seemed an oxymoron to imagine a starving doctor.\u00a0 The idealist in me heaved a sigh. Arnav, as always, was deeply practical about his decision to go into medicine.<\/p>\n

Like Arnav, many of my classmates have reasoned away the burden of their loans. Being a doctor is a secure and respectable job.\u00a0 Their debt pushes them to pursue fields that reimburse well.\u00a0 As one of my medical school friends shared with me, no one wants to stay in debt forever.\u00a0 The less time needed to pay it all off, the better.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, I believe that most of my classmates would agree that in the end, all those numbers fading away from our bank accounts will be forgotten.\u00a0 Already, the payments to AMCAS for applying to medical school are long-gone, lost amidst the moving process of dissecting a human body, the willingness of busy physicians to be my mentors, the privilege of being so trusted by another in clinic.\u00a0 Many years from now, I believe that my exorbitant tuition will be long-gone too, forgotten amidst the incredible experiences I have had, the colleagues I have met, the patients I have walked with on their journeys.\u00a0 These opportunities are indeed worth so much more than the entry fee that is medical school.<\/p>\n

My first year blew by.\u00a0 The end was jerky\u2014I performed badly on the final exam for neurology.\u00a0 Yet, even in feeling unable to remember any information, I told myself this: medicine is not about numbers. Medicine is about listening, caring, healing\u2014 things that are so human and valuable.<\/p>\n

And so, neither will I judge myself by numbers.
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\nStudent Loan by Simon Cunningham<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s so unfair that you have to pay for your flights for residency interviews!\u201d George, my fianc\u00e9, was indignant.\u00a0 \u201cIn addition to hotels, applications, and everything else!\u201d I looked over, surprised at his outburst.\u00a0 It was justice, not stinginess that lit the fire in his eyes. \u201cDear, we pay for everything when it comes to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[22,21,23],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":401,"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions\/401"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}