My first shadowing experience

You would think that at this stage of the application process -- having finished my pre-reqs, preparing for the MCAT, writing my personal statement, and choosing possible med schools -- I would have already checked off the "Shadowing" box on my "Preparing for Medical School" Checklist. But no, I've been slacking on this end.

I thought that with my extensive EMS experience as well as doing idiotic things that required me to see many doctors for random things over the years (the most recent visit was for an extreme slip 'n' slide injury), I had a pretty good grasp of what medicine was all about and standing in the corner cluelessly following a doc around would be boring and lame.

But I wisened up, swallowed my pride, and decided this was a fairly easy hoop to jump through and I should give it a chance. And so I started with a specialty I'm very seriously considering: hand surgery. It didn't hurt that I was seeing my hand surgeon quite regularly at the time and he had a student shadowing him during my first visit. So I asked, and he accepted. Easy as pie.

In short, it was a very interesting experience. Surprisingly, I learned a lot about hands and elbows, but it wasn't anything I couldn't have read in a book on my own (only because my education during that day was so superficial, and not because orthopedic surgery is easy). I know I wasn't there to learn about hand surgery enough to be able to perform it next week, and this wasn't part of my medical education. So instead, I tried to focus on the clinic aspects of my doctor's day, as in how his day was structured, how he worked with others around him, and all that jazz. And that was pretty informative.

The following interaction kind of worried me and made me question my decision to go to medical school (again):

He had a perplexing case one day where he just couldn't figure out what was wrong with this man who had had wrist pain for a few years now. His MRI came back negative, and the doc even said to his colleague that he didn't expect that to be normal. He was thoroughly confused after yet another physical examination. So what does he do? He uses the medical equivalent of Google! It was so interesting to see how he tries to understand cases that just stump him, and that he's clearly still learning.

I asked him if he often gets these kinds of cases where he just doesn't know what's going on and he replied that they're few and far between.

That response somewhat concerned me because my biggest worry about going through with this medical thing (as it was when I considered it back in undergrad) is that I'll get bored with my specialty and I will have wasted all these years of education for nothing. I mean, if I'm going to be bored with my job regardless, I may as well choose one that doesn't require so much sacrifice, stress, etc.

My doctor's day could be summarized as seeing a bunch of patients, approximately one every 10-15 minutes, a lot presenting with similar diagnoses. It just seemed routine, with the exception of the case mentioned above. But since those don't come up that often, it seems like his day-to-day life is pretty routine.

But I guess that's where the passion for your work comes into play. If you love it, then it's not routine to you. I thought I loved EMS (and still kind of do) but even emergency situations got boring in that we did the same thing for each patient: figure out what's wrong in the same manner, have a plan to keep them alive, and drive like crazy if it was particularly bad.

I had the patient contact, the team environment, the use of medical knowledge (to a certain extent), and the need to use that knowledge to make critical decisions. But it still wasn't enough. As someone mentioned on a forum I was reading, maybe I was bored with EMS because it wasn't intellectually stimulating. Maybe that's the last thread that was missing. But if I pursue medicine in the hopes that being a physician will fill that gap and it doesn't, I will have wasted a lot of years and a lot of money being unhappy. And that's scary.

As you can tell, I'm starting to question this decision in the same way I was questioning it six years ago. Then I quit medicine and tried to find happiness and fulfillment elsewhere, to no avail. What do I do this time around?