Text 3. Medical career

Ten people apply for every single place at medical schools. How can interviewers choose those who will become the best doctors? People sometimes criticize medical schools for selecting the best students and ignoring such qualities as maturity, adaptability and common sense. But it is impossible to say which of all the students being interviewed will develop these qualities. How, then, should you decide if medicine is the right career for you?

The most intelligent children at school are often encouraged to study medicine. But the study of medicine does not demand great intellect, it demands good memory and the willpower to read many long and boring textbooks. It demands great physical strength, for you must sometimes stay awake all night and go for hours without food. It also demands humility, for you will make many mistakes.

Salary, security and status are important to most people. But they are not themselves good reasons to study medicine. Love of science is a more honourable aim, but doctors who love only science will not find fulfillment in clinical medicine. A fascination with diseases is essential, but the student must also care about the people who suffer from those diseases. Ask yourself: does the human side of medicine attract or repel me?

In the past, doctors did not show their emotions. Patients could live or die, but the doctor remained unemotional. Nowadays, doctors know that their work often needs laughter, tears and anger as well as science. A good doctor can use his own emotions as part of the therapy.

Good doctors can be extroverted or shy, ambitious or modest, radical or conventional, brilliant or mediocre. People with disabilities and/or diseases – including deafness, paraplegia, diabetes and cancer – have studied medicine. They can become particularly sensitive doctors. To be a good doctor, you will need love of life and living things. If you can ignore a crying baby, if you have never looked forward to spring, if you find uneducated people dull, if you are happiest when you are alone – medicine is not the career for you.

When I was a young medical student, I was once rude about a patient. My professor took me aside to discipline me. ‘From today on’, he said, ‘you will begin to think and act as a doctor. But remember, you will never cease to be a medical student’. The old professor meant this: first, I must acquire a professional and compassionate approach to patients; and second, that medical science is continuously changing and my studies would not end when I graduate.

The first three years of medical schools are the pre-clinical years. The student learns anatomy (bones, muscles and organs of the human body), physiology (how the body works), biochemistry (chemical reactions occurring in the body cells), pharmacology (chemistry of drugs) and pathology (the study of diseases).

There is much to learn. The body has over 50 organs, 100 joints, 200 bones, 400 nerves, 500 arteries and 600 muscles, as well as 8 meters of gut and 100 square meters of lung. Every cell carries 10,000 genes on two meters of DNA in 46 chromosomes. There are 3,000 known inherited diseases and another 50,000 acquired diseases. More than 20,000 drugs are available to treat these diseases.

Only a foolish medical student tries to learn all this. A wise student learns only basic facts. He tries to view the whole, rather than details of its parts. He must gain a ‘feeling’ for the way the body works and heals. In future, this feeling will remain when some details are forgotten.

The following (clinical) years at medical school are spent in hospitals learning about illness. Illness is when the patient feels that something is wrong with him. A disease (for example, diabetes) can produce a wide spectrum of illness, depending on how the patient copes with the problem. Some people with diabetes feel that they are crippled and worthless; other people with the same disease live normal and active lives. One person who has a cold goes to bed for a week another goes to the doctor for some medicine; the other does not even think that he is ill. A student must learn how the patient’s beliefs, personality and culture influence the disease. He must learn to use the personality to reassure and comfort the patient. When he can do this, he will be ready to perform operations and prescribe drugs.

Medical course in Britain lasts five years; in the US it lasts eight years. After final examinations, a student may call himself a doctor, bit he cannot practice medicine alone yet. He does a residency (one or two years), working under supervision, usually in a hospital. Residents work long hours for a small salary. Their status in the hospital is low. Much of their work is administrative and boring. They are usually too inexperienced to win the patients’ respect. They live, eat and sleep within the hospital, which sometimes feels like a prison. The exciting areas of medicine, such as heart transplants and ‘wonder drugs’, are a long way away.

Residents learn that a degree in medicine is the beginning, not the end, of the road to success. Whatever branch of medicine a young doctor enters, he must study for at least three more years as well as doing a full-time job. For some specialties, such as surgery, a young doctor will spend another ten years studying. Over half of all doctors now take postgraduate examinations later in their careers.

Medical school is not the passport to a glamorous and exciting life, and there are certainly easier ways to earn high salaries. Doctors have twice the rate of alcoholism, divorce and suicide as other professional people, and women doctors often have difficulty combining medicine with motherhood. But rewards of understanding, and occasionally curing, diseases of human body and mind, have no parallel in any other profession.

Exercise 1. Explain the following:

Medical school, humility, clinical medicine, to use one’s emotions as part of the therapy, pre-clinical years, anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology, pathology, an inherited/acquired disease, to be crippled, a residency, heart transplants, wonder drugs, to find fulfillment in clinical medicine.

Exercise 2. Give Ukrainian equivalents to the following:

Deafness, paraplegia, diabetes, cancer, cold, an organ, a joint, a bone, an artery, a muscle, gut, a cell, a gene, a chromosome, fascination with diseases.

Exercise 3. Answer the following questions:

1. What were the two points the professor made to the author?

2. Why should a medical student only learn the important facts of medicine?

3. What factors can influence a disease?

4. Does a doctor work alone during his residency?

5. What is much of the work like during a residency?

6. How long does it take to become a surgeon?

7. How many doctors do postgraduate studies?

8. What are some of dangers for doctors in developed countries?

9. What are the main advantages of a medical career?

Exercise 4. Translate into English:

Якщо ви вирішили вступити до медицинського інституту та присвятити своє життя кар’єрі лікаря, ви повинні розвивати в собі такі якості, як зрілість, здоровий глузд та лагідність (здатність адаптуватися). Ви також повинні мати гарну пам’ять, силу волі, велику фізичну силу та вміння визнавати свої помилки.

Сьогодні визнання в клінічній (практичній) медицині знаходять ті, хто полюбляє науку, і кого приваблюють захворювання, а також той, хто зможе використати свої почуття та емоції як частину терапії.

Досить часто люди з такими захворюваннями, як параплегія, діабет, глухота та рак, стають найбільш розуміючими лікарями. Вони швидко набувають професійного та співчутливого підхіду до пацієнтів.

В «доклінічні» роки студенти вивчають фізіологію, біохімію, фармакологію та патологію.

В людському організмі існує велика кількість різних органів, суставів, м’язів, нервів та кісток, але їх знання не дає вам почуття того, як тіло функціонує та зцілюється. Ще далеко не всі спадкоємні та надбані хвороби піддаються лікуванню.

Роки навчання, коли ві ще не проходите практику в лікарні, не можуть порівнюватися з роками клінічної практики, коли студент-медик починає розуміти, як вірування, культура та особистість пацієнта впливають на перебіг хвороби.

Для молодих лікарів, що тільки починають працювати і проходять інтернатуру, чудодійні ліки та пересадження органів здаються далеким майбутнім.

Exercise 5. Write as many people involved in medicine as you know (minimum 10).