Pros and cons of choosing medicine

Medicine is one of the most important and sought-after professions all over the world. In Pakistan, let alone Punjab only, more than half a lac students attempt MDCAT (Medical and dental college aptitude test) every year and the number seems to be increasing every year. But this does not mean, medicine is the only important field. There are many other fields that you can adopt besides medicine. This article enlists the pros and cons of choosing medicine as your major after FSc/A levels and in a professional field too.

PROS:

1. The special treatment:

There’s absolutely no doubt about it and probably one of the most important reasons why a lot of people join this field. Whenever you mention the fact that you’re studying in medical college to someone, they start treating you with extra respect. And on the top of everything, people calling you ‘Doctor Sahab’ feels great honestly.

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2. Annual system:

One of the benefits of the annual system is that you can afford to relax at the start of the year. Since you know your exam will be conducted a year later, you can enjoy these days very much. Secondly, there’s no GPA system, just the marks. The only thing that counts is your performance on the exam. Assignments or presentation are not that important.

3. Job opportunities:

As a doctor, you do not need to worry about not getting a job as such. You can open a clinic, join a private or government hospital or start teaching in a medical college. So ‘not getting a job’ is something, you don’t get to worry about luckily.

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4. Noble profession:

If you're the type of person who likes helping others and you genuinely want to do something for the society, this field is going to help you a lot. As a doctor, if you save someone’s life for free who couldn’t have otherwise been able to afford the treatment, you’ll feel a lot better. You’ll play a very positive role in the society this way. A lot of doctors are doing so, with minimum fees or sometimes without any fees for deserving people.

5. Interesting things to know:

No matter how difficult the field is, no one will disagree with the fact that the field itself is interesting. Whatever diseases you get to study in the books, you also study them on patients in real life and watch them get treated for them. You’ll not just study the human liver in books, but you’ll get to hold it in your hand and learn its features.

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6. Helping your family and friends:

If you have a doctor in your family or with your friends, you’ll first turn to them if you need any medical advice or something. Doctors keep a check on the health of their parents and siblings or in case of an emergency, having a doctor in your family can be helpful. So, it feels great when you’re able to take care of your parents, your siblings, and friends in a better way than you could’ve done otherwise.

CONS:

1. Mental pressure:

The mental torture starts during the pre-medical days, during MDCAT and it does not end there. You’ll experience a nerve-wracking amount of pressure during a professional exam once you get into MBBS. The pressure of keeping up with your extraordinary genius class fellows in studies and co-curricular activities is too difficult to handle. The percentage of suicide, depression, anxiety is much higher in medicine than as compared to that in other fields.

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2. Too much work:

‘Doctors get paid well’ is a myth. If you know some doctors living a luxurious life, they must be doing two or three jobs at a time or they must have worked hard for like 20 – 30 years. Because as a house officer or as a junior doctor, after five years of hard work, you get paid like 45-60 thousand for a month where night duties, 36 hours rotation, 48 hours rotation are a common thing. You have to work really hard for a decent salary of 45-60 thousand.

3. Getting the blame:

Black sheep are everywhere, there’s no denying. But, most of the times either due to personal negligence of attendants or due to natural reasons, a patient does not recover in required time or dies, unfortunately, it is the doctor who is given the blame. No one can play God and stop anyone from dying but after being totally honest with your job you still get blamed, it does feel bad.

4. Not enough facilities in government hospitals:

This is a problem for students/doctors who work in government sector medical colleges. You’ll face issues like no electricity while doing an operation on a patient, X-ray machine being out of order and many other administrative issues. So you have to learn to deal with such issues.

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5. Lifetime studies:

Nowadays, doing just MBBS is not enough and it is important to get further degrees too. Because of lesser seats in post-graduation, poor regulation of medical education, uneven criteria, ultimately very few people get the branch and college of their choice. They have to just go with system ultimately. So, you’ll have to get into a lifelong relationship with studies.

6. Family life suffers:

As a doctor, it’s very likely that you won’t get to spend enough quality time with your family. Even as a medical student, the studies, and routine are very engaging which only gets more and more time demanding over time. So this is something doctors have to sacrifice since the number of doctors is much less as compared to the number of patients in our country.