Why become a doctor?

Why did i take up the medical profession? It's one of my life's
toughest questions.And i don't completely answer it even now.As a
child my dream was to become a doctor.Well you might say it's the
dream of every other child in India.Children catch fancy to the white
coat and stethescope without realising the toll it takes.So did i which
was very natural since my immediate family is filled with doctors
with my dad being a physician himself.For me as for everybody else
my dad was a hero and being a doctor seemed the natural choice.But
later when i grew up to a 15 yr old young impressionable boy,a
different sense prevailed.The stories of successful engineers and
managers from top institutes like IIT,IIM were hard to ignore.The
lure of big money is a big driver of ambitions.And i too was
swallowed by this hurricane and greed for easy money.I started
preparing for IIT-JEE.I worked hard for two full years.I sacrificed
two years of college social life to attain that incredible dream,but i
still came up short.When I realised that dream wouldnt realise i put
my energies towards getting into regional engineering colleges.But
fate had other ideas.Yes i did manage to get a good engineering rank
to secure a seat in a NIT and i would have gone on to be an
engineer.But along with my engg rank quite unexpectedly i secured
an excellent medical rank purely based on my excellent physics and
chemistry performance.It was at this point that the heart prevailed
over the mind.This i felt was how destiny handed out my true
calling.I realised that the only reason i wanted to do engineering was
because of money and not because i wanted to become one.I
obviously had the skills to become a better engineer than a doctor(I
was brilliant in math,physics and chem but not that good at biology)
but one of my deepest desires was to become a doctor.

I took up medicine and every so often during my M.B.B.S.
course i did wonder the prudence of that emotional decision.Time
and again it has made me look back and ask myself whether i made
the right decision.Today i have finished my M.B.B.S. degree and
now preparing for my P.G. entrances.I am right there where i started
six years ago.I'm not refraining from admitting that i do feel pangs of
envy when i see some of my classmates-who were much lower in the
class when it came to studies-today earning six figure salaries while i
am yet to start my professional career.And it is just because of that
one crutial decision.

You are at your own liberty to judge but according to me
a doctor's life is a hard life and much harder than the rest of the
others who luckily or otherwise couldnt become one.But of course
people are ought to say doctors make lot of money so that should
make up for all the hardship they've faced.Well its another thing that
not all doctors make money but we'll leave that debate to a later
date.Even so if doctors are making money, it's coming at what cost?
Years and years of hard work perfecting the art of healing while the
rest of the world scrutinises their life while all along that same rest
of the world has an easier life.Doctors sacrifice much of their
personal life to excel in their field.They rarely have vacations and
holidays.The profession is so demanding that "a little time off work"
does not seem to exist in their lifestyle.In this day and age,your
doctor is a cell phone away.Not to mention the insecurity that
accompanies a lot of a doctor's early formative years.So money is a
very small consolation for that don't you think?

You are bound to say this is a biased opinion because i am
a doctor so i'm only pouring out the problems of my profession and
that every profession has its own share of hardships.Point taken.But
for me after studying for six years in a course who only the cream of
intellect in society manage to secure and master i feel disillusioned
at salaries of Rs. 10,000-15,000 for a post M.B.B.S. doctor with no
oppotunity of growth in the institution.I feel cheated by this system
which rewards every engineer passing out-a financially secure life
while men and women who save lives are denied the dignity of a
respectable job.I have seen with my own eyes how people (including
some doctors) treat only M.B.B.S. doctors and known what they felt
about them and its certainly not good.So if you as a part of the
system expect a specialist in every field to treat you then why deny
these people an opportunity to specialise in their chosen field.Why
is the system instituting cut throat PG entrance examinations in the
middle of their study life.Every year out of 30,000 medical graduates
passing out only 7,000-8,000 of them manage to specialise in the
end.Why are we denying the rest of the doctors that right and
cursing them to an ordinary life when actually they don't deserve to
be treated that way?Why shouln't every doctor passing out have the
option to specialise.But of course i am speaking of an idealistic
world where everything is fair but in reality it's not.

So why should a person take up this profession which
takes so much and gives very little? Despite all that i have said and
all the insecurity that precedes my immediate future i feel happy that
i am a doctor.Yes i'll second that.you would think i must be crazy to
actually love this profession after all the diatribe i've fed you over
the previous paragraphs.I certainly know its a tough life ahead but
anybody else other than a doctor wouldn't know the high of being
one.Every so often, maybe not every time as a doctor you get to
actually save lives.The happiness and gratitude of the patients and
their relatives later on is a very gratifying thing.To alleviate pain and
suffering is a doctors duty but a doctor gets a lot more out of that
chore than the patient.He gets a high that that no money in this
world would suffice to gain it.That's the real reason he or she is
there in this profession.If there's any other reason then he or she is
probably lying.Either that or he or she is in the wrong profession
because money is certainly not that incentive though it may certainly
come with it.So indeed i probably could not answer the core
question of why i took up this profession but my life would not have
been quite as satisfying if i had done anything else.By writing this i
do not intend to change anybody's attitude or for any noble cause
like to initiate a change in this unfair system.Rather all i wanted was
to convince myself that despite everything thats wrong with my
profession and the way society treats doctors these days,what i am
doing is still worth doing and i can most certainly say it is.

Raghuraj S. Hegde