So You Want to Be a Doctor… What’s Your “Why?”
I remember reading that “medicine is a calling, not a profession.” You have to be sure that this is what you want in life. While a blog article can’t dictate that for you, I hope that it’ll point you in the right direction.
Is Medicine Right for Me?
Many students ask themselves this even when they’re already in medical school. Honestly, there will be days when you will doubt your decision. It’ll get tough, and you’ll ask yourself whether this is right for you. So, ask yourself a few things:
“Did I think this through enough?”
“Did I weigh the pros and cons?” “Did I consider the sacrifices that I and the people around me will have to make?” Some people spend years asking themselves this, and that’s fine. The more sure you are, the more likely you will persevere even on the worst days of medical school.
“Do I have the resources to pursue this profession?”
It’s expensive, but you won’t just need funds. You’ll need emotional support and the mental readiness to push toward your goals. Medical school requires you to be patient with yourself and suck up a lot of pride. You’ll need resources beyond tangible ones like money.
“Is this my passion?”
Many people find fulfillment in helping others but not making a living from it. Think about what you want. Is it fulfillment? Money? Excitement? I promise that other jobs can give you these without the problems you’ll have in medical school. While these alternatives have their own challenges, they might be a better fit. Try to consider these or exhaust all your options before deciding that you want to become a doctor.
Common Reasons Why People Enter Medical School
During medical school interviews, students are commonly asked, Why do you want to become a doctor? There are many reasons to pursue medicine. They’re all valid, and they are sometimes enough to drive a person through medical school. However, ask yourself if what you want can be best achieved through becoming a doctor.
“I want to save lives/empower patients/make a difference”
Many students give similar answers to this when asked about their motivations. These students want jobs involving compassion, trust, and service. However, this is not exclusive to doctors. Do you want compassion? Become a nurse or any healthcare worker job instead. In my experience, many nurses I know are the most compassionate and selfless people I’ve ever met. They even have better schedules than doctors. Do you want to make a difference for patients? Volunteer for charity events or become a politician.
“I want to be rich”
Medicine promises a lot of financial stability because there will always be a need for more doctors. This is not a good reason because it’s not even that true. Medical school is expensive. If you want to become rich, get a degree in business. One of the reasons why doctors are poor is because they have bad business sense. I could have been rich if I had gone to a corporate job straight out of graduation instead of medical school. Don’t go to medical school for money.
“It’s my childhood dream”
This used to be my reason, and it did not work. If I had followed my real childhood dream, I would have become a swashbuckling pirate. That’s illegal. Many people think that following their childhood dream means following their passion. It’s not. You’d be following the whims of a child. Even worse, these ideas could be dictated by what your parents wanted. Your career as an adult should be something that makes you happy with a hint of reality.
“It carries influence and prestige”
Although this is true, it’s also a harmful idea to have. Don’t become a doctor for the clout. In my experience, most people who give the profession so much prestige are outside of medicine. That MD at the end of your name may gain some admiration because of the nature of the job. However, that won’t stop patients and co-workers alike from being rude. Do you want respect and praise? Reconsider a career in healthcare. Moreover, you’re not supposed to determine your career based on the opinions of others. They won’t be the ones reading all those books, crying over exams, and dealing with patients.
“I love science and I want to further my knowledge”
Doctors are nerds, and I mean that in the best way possible. They’re people with a passion for science. They wouldn’t have survived the grueling trials of medical school if they didn’t like it. However, medicine isn’t the only postgraduate course out there. There are many master’s and doctorate programs that can suit science lovers just as well — or maybe even better — than medicine can. They’re even more specialized, so you won’t have to study the subjects in medicine you dislike.
If these are any of your reasons, and they’re enough to get you through medical school, then good for you. However, if you want to become a doctor for only one of these reasons, you’ll end up broke and disappointed. Medicine is only one path of many to achieve the things you want. Do not simply say, I want to become a doctor. Think about why it has to be medicine and nothing else.
How to find your motivation and stay motivated
“Always remember your Why.” This is a quote commonly told to us in medical school. It means that whenever things get tough, remember why you started in the first place — your Why. Why did you choose to be a doctor? However, even with a great reason, you can still lose sight of your goals. That’s understandable, given how hard medical school can be before, during, and after.
#1: Shadow a doctor or do volunteer work
There are opportunities everywhere to volunteer for healthcare-related causes. You can check your local hospital or travel abroad. As much as possible, volunteer in places that need help the most. These can be poverty-stricken areas or third-world countries. What’s important is that you get to see what healthcare looks like from different perspectives. Not everyone has access to healthcare. Some patients’ experiences will be worse than others. At some point, you’ll find something you’ll want to change in the healthcare system or do as a doctor.
#2: Set short-term goals
Obstacles will always arise when you undertake anything. In medical school, the studies will get overwhelming. So when things are tough, you can make your work more digestible by setting short-term goals. Why? Because if your goal in medical school is to become a doctor or change the healthcare system, that’ll take years. You won’t feel any sort of reward, and naturally, you’ll feel demotivated. Goals like “get a higher grade on the next exam” are great. However, it’s important to also make goals such as “exercise every day” or “start a new hobby”. ¡Self-care is even more important than academic achievements. So, always make time for yourself!
#3: Make friends
Friends are a good source of support. They’re even fun to study with! Many people enter medical school not planning to make friends; but having social support helps you stay resilient. I learned in medical school that I wouldn’t have gotten by without supportive friends.
#4: Find a subject you enjoy; be ready for those you don’t
There’s a little something for everyone in medicine. I know people who went through medical school because they wanted to become a surgeon or an internist. However, they felt demotivated when studying subjects they didn’t enjoy. During those times, they reminded themselves that once they entered their dream specialization, the fields they disliked would be someone else’s problem.
My “Why:” By Bianca Villanueva
“Going to medical school wasn’t an easy choice for me. Honestly, I wasn’t confident enough to believe that I could become a doctor — I thought that it was for people who were gifted in some way. I was none of those things. In fact, my grandmother discouraged me from pursuing medicine. I was told that it wasn’t for someone like me. Taking the entrance exam was just my way of proving her wrong. I eventually stopped caring about what my grandmother thought about me. Then, I realized proving her wrong was a terrible reason to become a doctor.
I felt demotivated. I didn’t know what I was doing in medical school. I was totally out of my league, and the classes were getting progressively more difficult each day. That is, until I started interacting with patients more often. Step by step, I learned how to take a patient’s history, do a physical exam, diagnose, then treat. I loved it.
Some of you may have expected a more altruistic reason why I stayed in medical school. You might think I’m someone who wants to further the field, provide a better quality of life for my patients, or change the healthcare system in my third-world country. All these are noble goals, and a part of me does want to make a difference. But I mostly stayed because I just loved doing what doctors do. Compared with my jobs in counseling, human resources, and psychometrics, I had never felt this fulfilled.
In those previous jobs, I would stare at the clock until it was time to go home. But when I worked in my favorite rotations, I didn’t care what time it was. My advice? Altruistic goals only get you so far. You must be in this profession for both yourself and others.
Why? Because according to Frederick Buechner, “your vocation in life is where your greatest joy meets the world’s greatest need”. You may want to help others, but does this work make you happy? You might enjoy the perks of being a doctor, but can you do a service job for the rest of your life? Being a doctor has its pros and cons, like any job. Honestly, it had more cons than I thought it would. But sometimes I look back at the patients who genuinely thanked me for my help and got to go home to be with their families. I live for those moments. That’s how I know I’m exactly where I need to be.” – Bianca Villanueva
How to Answer “Why Do You Want to Be a Doctor” in Med School Interviews
Many students fall into the trap of providing a vague answer about enjoying science, wanting to help people, or always wanting to be a doctor. What they don’t realize is that most (if not all) applicants to medical school share these characteristics!
What differentiates you in answering the question is unique to your situation, so you’ll want to incorporate memorable specifics into your answer to help paint a better picture of you as an applicant. Answering this question provides you with a unique opportunity to put your journey to applying to med school into a coherent narrative. With a little thought, tailoring your answer can be a great way to highlight the strengths in your application or to shore up weaknesses. Here are a couple of thoughts on how to answer the question, and some pitfalls to avoid:
The Best Response Refers to Your Resume But Does Not Just Rehash It
Use your answer to highlight not only your interest in medicine but how you came to develop that interest. Applicants often highlight the origins of their desire to be a doctor but are short on details as to how their resume relates to the journey to applying to med school. It’s not enough to say you “always wanted” to be a doctor; show through stories what you did along the way to understand more about yourself and that desire.
Vague answer
“I always knew I wanted to be a doctor ever since I was a kid. I did some shadowing in high school and I volunteered in college at a hospital too, so I basically felt like I understood what doctors did every day and knew I wanted to be one.”
This answer doesn’t provide much information about the applicant beyond what could already be found on their resume. Your interviewers will want to hear more about you as a person that they couldn’t find out by reading the rest of your application.
Better answer
“I didn’t come from a family of doctors, but my parents say it was always something I was interested in. After one of my friends told me about how their dad, who is a doctor, used to be on call all the time and would sometimes miss holidays or birthdays from getting called to the hospital, I decided it would be a good idea to try to get a better sense of what it was actually like being a doctor. I asked to shadow him in high school, and it really opened my eyes to the fact that if I was going to do this, I needed to be really sure I was ready to handle the demands of the job. I started volunteering at our local emergency department in college to try to prepare myself even more. I learned a lot from being in the ED – not just about being a doctor, but about all the other roles it takes to successfully care for a patient. Now that I’m better informed, I want to be a doctor because there’s no other job where the sacrifice seems so worth it – you can make an immediate, life-changing difference for people, as I saw time and again when patients came in with strokes, heart attacks, and injuries.”
This answer adds detail that might not be evident elsewhere in the application. It shows that the applicant understands some of the demands of being a doctor (missing holidays and birthdays, acknowledging personal sacrifice) as well as highlighting an attempt to grow personally and gain clinical skills as a motivation for volunteering (rather than “checking a box” to show they volunteered). It also opens the possibility of the interviewer asking follow-up questions about what they saw in the emergency department that they liked or disliked, or what they learned from that experience.
Specify Why Medicine Is Your Choice Over Any Career In The Sciences
There are many jobs where you can use science to help people other than being a doctor, and there seem to be more every day. This might have been your initial motivation for exploring becoming a doctor, but interviewers will want to know how you built on that motivation and decided on medicine specifically. Liking science and wanting to help people are great initial motivations, but interviewers will want to see more than that in an application. Be sure to use your answer to expand on why medicine specifically, versus another career in the sciences.
Vague answer
“I really enjoyed science in high school, and I knew I wanted to help people, so I decided to major in biology in college. I wasn’t really sure whether or not to apply to med school right away, so I took a gap year after college and worked as a scribe.”
This answer doesn’t sound as if the interviewee has put much thought into addressing the question. It might also invite some unwelcome questions about why the interviewee took a “gap year,” and prompt the interviewer to ask whether they’ve applied to medical school before and failed to get in, or about their academic record, which could present a problem if it is not stellar.
Better answer
“As a high school student, I was fascinated with my science classes. Someone suggested I consider biology as a major in college, so I gave it a shot. Even though I loved my classes and the research lab that I worked in, I wasn’t completely satisfied with how I was applying what I knew. Rather than trying to apply to med school right away, I decided to spend a year working with patients to see if it was right for me. I took a job as a medical scribe, and it really confirmed my suspicion that medicine was a better fit for me than benchwork would have been. Seeing the way the doctors in our clinic utilized their knowledge to help people every day in a tangible way showed me that medicine was the way I wanted to apply my skills. Having some patient contact scratched that itch of what I needed that I wasn’t getting from my benchwork: the chance to directly apply scientific principles to a person to help them in real time.”
This answer is actually from the same student, with more detail. It sounds more confident, explains the gap year coherently, and illustrates personal growth. An interviewer would be much more likely to follow up with a question about the applicant’s research background or clinic experience next, rather than trying to get more details about a gap year.
Consider Why You Want To Be a Physician
For some interviewers, it’s not good enough to say you want to go into medicine alone. Interviewers will want to know why you want to be a doctor specifically versus a nurse, physician assistant, physical therapist, or any other number of healthcare professionals who care directly for patients. Your answer should explain that you’ve been exposed to these possibilities and have a specific reason for choosing to pursue one over another.
Vague answer
“I spent a lot of my career as an operating room nurse, but after a while, I really wanted to prescribe medicines, call the shots, and make more money. That’s when I decided to apply to med school.”
Although this answer is somewhat exaggerated, it isn’t far off from real answers given by less-than-savvy applicants. This answer shows a lack of understanding of the roles of various health professions. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants can often prescribe medications, and in an increasingly team-based world, doctors aren’t the sole decision-makers when it comes to patient care. If autonomy were a big motivator for this applicant, there are better ways to express this.
Better answer
“As an operating room nurse, I loved the patient care contact, and I found myself fascinated by what surgeons did on a daily basis. As time went on, I realized I wasn’t going to be satisfied in my career unless I was able to actually perform surgery independently on a patient. While some of my colleagues went on to become nurse practitioners or physician assistants, I wanted to go the physician route because I knew I wanted to be performing surgery in the OR independently. I want to be a doctor because I want to be a surgeon, and there isn’t another way for me to achieve that dream.”
This answer shows a better understanding of team roles and scope of practice than the previous one. It still gets at the idea of autonomy, while showing an understanding of team roles. A followup question might include a discussion of the applicant’s nursing experience or desire to be a surgeon specifically.
In Summary…
There are as many ways to answer the “why do you want to be a doctor” question as there are applicants to medical school, so it pays to prepare an answer ahead of time. Use the fact that the question is virtually guaranteed to your advantage, and highlight elements of your application that aren’t immediately obvious on review of your resume. With some careful planning, your answer can set you up for success in the rest of your medical school interview!
