What's it like Being a Doctor?

DOCTOR LIFE is very variable as the field is divided into specialties as dissimilar as the eye is from the skin. The environment practiced in also is highly variable e.g.. Military vs. commercial vs. public. Some doctors practice from home - like family physicians - but most practice in clinics or hospitals.

For family physicians, hours of work are similar to regular offices with some taking night calls to their patients. Clinics also run regular hours but some offer extended hours so their doctors work a rotating shift system. In a hospital, care must be provided around the clock. In many hospitals doctors work an on-call rota which varies from center to center. At it's worse, this can mean every three days working a regular work day, through the night, and then through the next day again with two or three hours sleep, then resuming work the next morning for a regular eight hour work day. This of course is very taxing on a doctor and results social and home concerns.

For all doctors, after the 'trauma' of medical school, a period of internship is required. This a time of supervised clinical training with a steep learning curve. Many clinical skills are developed for cases of future emergency, many of which a doctor may never be called on to use again. Typically the degree of hands-on experience a doctor is involved in decreases with time and more time is spent on direction of younger doctors. A doctor becomes more valuable with age as his or her body of experience and therefore clinical judgment grows.

As many more physicians are needed in communities than are trained, doctors seldom experience the turbulence of market fluctuations as in other fields. That is to say, layoffs and unemployment are uncommon. This is because medicine is a protected industry by government intervention - it is unacceptable to have hospital staff shortages related to stock market ups and downs.

Graduation from medical school does not guarantee lifetime practice. To protect the public, medical cases with unusual or unexpectedly poor outcomes are reviewed by medical boards. If the attending physician is repeatedly found erring s/he is deemed unfit to practice and their license is revoked. Some physicians today, when they left medical school, ECG's, CAT scans and other modern investigations hadn't been invented yet. So part of being a doctor is keeping up with changes in the field.

The day to day experience of a doctor is typically spent hurriedly, with a high degree of concentration and split second decisions based on a lifetime of experience.

Thank You for Using our Site Doctor Secrets!

Last Modified: