5 Reasons Why I Hate Being a Doctor

Have you watched Gray’s anatomy where everyone is eating his coworker’s sausage with extra mayonnaise or putting an extra banana in the fruit salad? You might have watched Dr. House like Agatha Christie wrote it. Where every case is a delightful puzzle that needs to be solved and analysed by collecting and connecting the pieces together?

Besides that, you get a lot of money while you are helping others. Wow, what else you ask? I will leave that to the next article. For now, let me ruin those rosy dreams of yours and tell my top 5 reasons I hate being a doctor.

You might ask why 5 reasons, why not 3 or 7, is it because there are only 5 reasons?

The answer would be, because I wrote the article and I want it like that, you might come tomorrow and find 3 or 10 reasons, I have the freedom to choose whatever I want, ok? If you don’t agree, stop reading and leave. I am not here to amuse you.

1. You work with a lot of narcissistic people

Most doctors are not mainly there to help you. They have other set of motivation; they are type A personality and are there to satisfy their own ego. Working with such people is a pure pain in the waste canal. I have been in many situations where a colleague would tell me that what I am doing is wrong and should have done it in another way, what an A**h***!!! I had to shield my opinions — regardless of the consequences- because I am always right.

2. You meet people in their worst mental and physical states

The fanciest hospital in the world is not a Disney land and our services are not always pleasant, the customer is not always right and we guarantee we are going to serve you the worst food of your life. With all that being said, you come to us in your lowest mental state. You are complaining about something! What kind of service are you expecting when you are complaining before you enter the doors? The next time you visit a movie theater or a touristic attraction, compare the faces standing at the doors with those standing at the doors of the emergency room. Your negativity is being transmitted to us. Next time please come with a Disney’s attitude.

3. We are Humans!

Yes, are you surprised? It’s true that we are great and offer a very special service, but we are not perfect. Sleep and food are essential for our survival. We might have a fight with our significant other in the morning and not have the capacity at that day to offer compassion and pay enough attention. Due to long working hours, endless stress and large number of patient, we might reach a day where we miss or make a mistake. EVERYONE DOES. Don’t worry, most of those mistakes will go unnoticed. We are very good at fixing our mistakes. We know you will not forgive that doctor who made a mistake. If the doctor can not be perfect, why did he study medicine in the first place?

4. Emotional traumas because of continuous exposure to death, suffering and delivering bad news.

You remember that feeling when something good happens to you run to your beloved ones, eyes sparkling, heart bounding, and a banana smile. You want to tell everyone, even post it on Facebook, Instagram, and tweet it. We share the other type of news that one no one wants or is interested to hear. Good morning, you have cancer, don’t worry! Medicine has advanced and we have a lot of treatment options. That might be true by the way, your cancer could be treatable, but I would like to say something like; Good morning, the biopsy results came back negative and you are completely healthy. We might not show it, but we feel you and we carry this sadness sometimes for a long time. I remember one time; I wanted to tell a patient that he has stomach cancer. When I entered the room, he looked into my face and asked why I look worried? “is it cancer? Don’t worry, I am 64 years old and I have lived a good life,” he said.

5. Work life struggle

Work schedule that is guaranteed to consume all your time. Some might complain about the 9 to 5 work model. Wait until you try the 24 hours shift or the one week morning and the next evening routine, or even better, a no rest month (30 days of work with no rest day). Yes, I understand we can’t close the hospital on holidays, but that doesn’t mean that I enjoy the working on those days. I have other interests like going to Disney land, walking in the park of eating a decent meal once in a while.

PS:

• I don’t like it when someone call patients customers. I find it a commercial word and patients have a lot of rights that customers don’t.
• You might ask why did I choose medicine then or why don’t I change to another work? I will answer that in my next article.
• Things are not as bad as I describe them above, mostly they are better, some other times could be worse.

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