Questioning Your Choices

Profession: Medical Student

Submitted On: September 26th, 2020

Trigger Warnings: suicidal ideation

"I’m sure I’m not the only one who is going through this so I thought I’d share. I’m a fourth year medical student who is now burnt out before her career even began. I remember coming into medical school feeling so excited and full of dreams, only to be met with a face full of information that is impossible to completely absorb. They tell you that things get better when rotations start, but I feel like my mental state got progressively worse and worse every year. It has gotten to the point that I just have no motivation to bring to the table when I show up to my rotations, which has resulted in less than stellar evaluations from my preceptors. I had been dreaming of going into ortho since I was a pre-med in college, but I don’t think I’m competitive enough. It’s really hard to have gone through all these years of schooling and dedication just to discover that you probably won’t get to do what you really wanted to do. This entire pipeline seems like it was designed to suck the life out of you, and I haven’t even began residency yet. This is what burnout looks like and it can happen at any stage of medicine, doctor or not. My boyfriend, who is also a med student, is the only one close enough to me to know what I’m going through… he has already talked me out of suicide a few times. I’m scared he’ll leave me if things get really bad, since he’s also dealing with his own unresolved mental health issues at the moment. I saw the insta post of how 44% of physicians are burnt out, and I'm beginning to think that I might have chosen the wrong profession."

We appreciate the opportunity to share stories like these with our community, with the goal of destigmatizing the struggles faced within the medical field.