You’ll laugh, you’ll Cry: Undergraduate Medicine

The first thing you will encounter is lots of new faces. People all excited to be there just like you are. This is good because you will make friends that will stick with you and you will be stuck with them for up to six years. The next thing that will happen is you will be congratulated, a lot. People will tell you that you are some of the best and brightest around. They will tell you that you have finally made it. The reality is, however, you have not. This will be the easiest moment of the next few years, so milk it for everything that it is worth.

Initially, medicine will be a lot like school, but with a lot more pub crawls. Sure, you’ll have to decide on what your own homework will be, but you will, by and large, be taught the things you need to know for the assessments at the end of the semester and year.

You will pick up a new language, one that is unintelligible to essentially other people. You will appear fluent in it by six months – but you will often find yourself using words you know you are supposed to, but still don’t really know the meaning of.

You will learn very quickly that it is not always about what you know, but about what other people think you know. “Fake it ‘til you make it” will be your new maxim in life, a maxim condoned by your peers, your seniors and your faculty. A wise doctor once told me that the confidence that someone knows what is wrong and what to do about in combination with a sympathetic ear will often be enough to heal what ails them. It also helps to know some medicine, but you’ve got all of the med school for that.

There is much more in all of the medicine than any one person could know. Despite this fact, your consultant will still expect you to know it on the ward-round and may deride you for your ignorance. Just because they are your senior does not mean they are right. A troll with a stethoscope is still a troll.

Imposter syndrome will become your perpetual bedfellow. You know more than you think, I assure you. Just try talking to someone who doesn’t study medicine to restore your confidence.

As you progress into the hospital, this acquisition of knowledge will be made harder by the fact you are essentially expected to maintain full-time hours running after the consultant carrying their papers before collapsing at home, feeding yourself, exercising, earning enough to pay for rent and food as well as study and have fun.

You will cause pain to people. Physical and mental.

You will feel useless. You will not be able to help. You will forget your patients. Or worse, remember their suffering as you try to go to sleep at night.

But every now and then, you will nail intravenous access, or the surgeon will compliment your suturing or you will pick a diagnosis the doctor hadn’t thought of and you will be on a golden cloud for days. These will be the moments that buoy you up through the rest of it.

You will hear things people wouldn’t tell their lovers. And what’s more, you might be the only person they have told. What’s even more, you might be able to help.

You will be overworked, underappreciated, demeaned and even spat at.

50% of you will develop a depression or anxiety according to Beyond Blue.  But we will be there to help you, so tell someone.

Undergraduate medicine is a bit like a bad relationship. You go through a lot of hardship, sometimes it’s downright mean to you. But it’s the good bits that make it worthwhile. And who knows, maybe it will turn out well in the end.