I don’t think computers will ever substitute a physician’s ability to “heal” the patient, nor do I believe primary care doctors are in jeopardy of being replaced (although I do feel nurse practitioners will take on a greater role in the initial workup of patients). But what I do know is that primary care will be foolish not to incorporate a computer’s suggestions in the future.

Walking past the TV while my mom is watching her favorite Indian serials is a horrible reminder of the extent to which the “brown culture” has decided to promote becoming a physician. There are so many commercials advertising medical schools abroad which require no admissions test (MCAT), promise “mainland training”, lower tuition, good teachers, etc. Now I wouldn’t have a problem with this except for the fact that you never see any other profession being advertised. No longer is medicine a choice of career – it’s almost an expectation portrayed by the media. If you’re not a doctor (or engineer at that), you’re not worth anything. You’re a philosophy major? You write? Or God forbid, you’re an artist? You might as well not exist.

People are going to extraordinary lengths just to get their medical licenses, and honestly, I can’t imagine a lot of them as physicians in the first place (a humble opinion as a non-physician myself). Being forced to follow any career goal by the media or your parents is a bad idea. After all, a real career is one which is more of a hobby than a job. In the case of medicine, not only will you hinder your own life but that of your patients and colleagues. It’s also not a profession you should try out with the intention of dropping out, yet a disproportionately large number of brown people do. I’m doing medicine because that’s what every respectable, brown male should do, right? I’ll try it, and if I don’t like it, there’s always option B, C, or D… though you may be frowned upon for not becoming a doctor.

Give me a freakin’ break!! This career is far too demanding to do off a whim. A lot of brown society is under the false assumption that medicine is a fixed life of prosperity and prestige. After all, how many people are ridiculed for being physicians? Yet they conveniently forget the arduous journey between college and becoming licensed in a specialty.

So for the brown people who don’t want to do medicine, while you may be going against the stereotype, don’t think you’re being a rebel. Do what you do best. Whether it’s medicine, journalism, business, engineering… whatever! But please don’t have the audacity to label those who have chosen this path, not because of the stereotype, parental pressures, or the media but because it genuinely is their life’s passion, as “conformists” without actually knowing what this career entails.

This post is a bit choppy, but I feel better now.

Information technology would have offered an endless supply of projects to utilize mathematical thinking in a computer-intense lifestyle. I could have worked from home. I’d have better hours. My responsibilities would be different since lives wouldn’t be hanging in the balance. Plus, the corporate ladder is always fun to scale up.

So why medicine? Here’s my *abbreviated* explanation:

We’re living in an information era filled to the brim with emphasizing technology – improving it, utilizing it, applying it in fields we never thought possible. Consequently, I don’t have to “give up” technology to be a physician as it goes hand-in-hand with the future of medicine. Those with a firm understanding of technological do’s and don’t have a substantial edge in adapting to new medical procedures, treatments, etc. Coupled with a business background, I see myself designing the software and instrumentation, marketing it, and then implementing it in the operating room in a “bench to bedside” approach to neurological therapy. This would be the ideal unification of everything I enjoy doing – an opportunity that only medicine, not IT nor business, could provide.

Finally, there are countless others who would gladly take my spot at Baylor Med and in the Texas Medical Center without any “plan B” like IT. For their sake as well as the health of my future patients, I’m humbled by this privilege and intend to make the most of it.

A relatively small percentage of “pre-med students” actually matriculate to medical school, and among them, even fewer attend their first choice. I think about those in Haiti, the poorest country in the western world, with a patient to doctor ratio of ~4000:1. After the recent earthquake, that ratio become all too obvious with thousands of injured citizens in need of medical treatment. I’m sure a lot of the Haitians aspired to become physicians, but due to a lack of institutions and resources, they sadly had to cut their dreams short.

This brings up an unusually prevalent yet disturbing dichotomy – so many medical students are gung-ho about healthcare, but after embarking on the arduous journey, they resent it with as much passion as they originally expressed in loving it. I think it’s safe to say that at some point, every medical student will feel varying levels of doubt in their choice of profession. So how do we overcome this?

It’s obviously no easy task and is highly dependent on an individual’s personality and ability to change. I’ll share three of the ways in which I retain my enthusiasm (and warrant the laughter of some classmates).

Interview Day

There’s something about a bunch of incredibly intelligent albeit anxious group of pre-med students which just makes me… happy. They represent the purest form of enthusiasm for me – eager to get started, loving the research they’re doing, following doctors on a routine basis, and genuinely being interested in the future of healthcare. Maybe it’s because I was in their shoes a year ago that I can relate to them, but it’s still a refreshing reminder of the enthusiasm circulating amongst pre-meds for the career. I still can’t express how excited I get when even international students contact me seeking advice about their career. I try to remain humble (after all, how much do I really know as an MS-1), but it makes me warm and fuzzy inside.

Neurosurgery

I’m fortunate enough to attend a medical school in the same city as my undergrad, so the relationships I built during my three years at HBU can carry over to medical school. Watching neurosurgeries takes me away from medicine and puts me into the excessively inquisitive mindset I had growing up. Oh, how does that work? What kind of software does that run? That scope is $500,000!? I’ve been fortunate to have a mentor who goes out of his way to introduce me to his colleagues and explain the reasoning behind each of his decisions. During one of the pre-ops, he asked some of us what the first thing we should do when patients wake up after verifying their response to stimuli. We quickly responded with phrases like “administer anti-seizure meds!” and “make sure the inflammation is reduced!” In reality, the answer was as simple as – “feed him.” Yeah… after an eight hour surgery… I’d be hungry too. It’s the simple (humanistic) things we tend to forget as we’re engrossed in medical facts.

Talk About Medicine

I wouldn’t dare do this with a fellow medical student (unless I wanted to be falsely labeled as a gunner or just “weird”), but it’s fun to talk to people outside of medicine about your goals. Neurosurgery and technology are the two most important subject fields for me, and I intend to be “that surgeon” who enjoys utilizing the latest and greatest in surgical innovation to improve microsurgery outcomes while minimizing risks. I can go on and on about this uniting of my interests, and it’s a timely reminder of why I’m in this journey to begin with.

Quite frankly, I’m sure there will be a point in my career where I want to quit, but in the grand scheme of things, there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing. There are countless others out there who would give anything to be in my shoes, so I owe it to them to excel in this privileged position.

How do you remain enthusiastic?