If you could do it all again...would you?

[Diya]

I think medicine is a vocation and that its my 'calling' as its the only thing I have the remotest desire to do as a career. Sure I have other interests but none of them would I sacrifice as much for as I would (will in future) for medicine. I would do it again, in the exact same way. No regrets and long may I continue to feel this way!

[Gizmo says -]

Originally Posted by alex MD

But I guess thats just me 2p on it!! Hopefully I don't sound like an overly naive, over enthusiastic 17 year old idiot!

Alex
btw, whos Archie?

sorri, macca, sorri.

Archie Angel.
i fink he mite be called Nick and all.

{in best female West Country Accent} - 'Get a look of his arrrse...'

[Singh.Simran]

I don't mean dictionary definition, i mean the people who think they were born to be doctors, that the job is something more than a job because it incorporates healing (which after all, countless jobs do).

I think those people often haven't made a weighed up judgement and arent going for it logically for the inherent benefits but more for the rosy picture and the idea that medicine is their lost-lost twin brother. A much more...esoteric, emotional definition of vocation.

Course some of them are suited to it, and enjoy it. But many of them, because their decision is oddly motivated, are only one or neither...

As for tescos - as i said before, it's not a simple as use those skills. medicine uses them more strongly, more extensively, to greater reward both monetary and otherwise. As i say, it's all the same skills, you make your decision based on other matters. There's no genetic super doctor, he's just someone who could easily have been a nurse/lawyer/physicist who decided that for whatever reason he preferred medicine.

but that's all it is. another choice. another career. it's not unique, not any more different than any career x is to any y. it's not some superhuman calling.

[Singh.Simran]

This is not to say that my motivation is any less than the rest of yours, or that i might up sticks and become a "hotshot lawyer". I made my choice and will stand by it.

But my motivation, like everything else, is logical. medicine is what i will be good at, that my skills apply to, that i feel will bring me the most benefit as well as the reverse. but it's not my calling; there's no reason why growing up i couldn't have had slightly different experiences and picked something else.

[rjm]

Well I hope you have a long and happy medical career.

[Singh.Simran]

And the same to you.

[Diya]

Hear hear!
Whether we like it or not, the financial aspect is an important one but hopefully, it is not the primary goal to make shedloads of money cos I can think of many many easier ways of doing that...become a plumber for e.g. or even a street cleaner

[yazoo]

Imagine. Med school interview: medicine is not a vocation. Discuss.

How many people say it is? And why do they answer that? Important questions, I think.

[yazoo]

Originally Posted by Singh.Simran

I don't see any job as a "vocation" and people who think they have a calling are misguided and often the first to get jaded.

The people who get jaded are the ones who failed to identify a job that they find inspiring enough to get them through the dark times that medicine invariably throws up. Death, career progression strife (MTAS ), obnoxious colleagues...

[Arch_Angel]

It's just semantics.

Medicine is a vocation. It's also a passion and a philosophy. As is science.

There's no reason to not see a medicine course as training for a job, but then I'm sure if it wasn't so difficult to get into people would do it out of interest. So obviously the way that enterance and the course is structured leans towards vocation, but you wouldn't have to change anything about the fundamentals of the subject to make it purely academic. It all depends how you approach it yourself.

That said getting on a course is so stressful and difficult that someone that just wanted to do it out of interest wouldn't bother. Hence everyone takes the course as a vocational one.

Also with £250,000 tax payer money being spent per student it's only fair that this be the correct ideology to adopt.