Quoted: Anxiety about medical school

[Doodledog]

Posted anonymously, I will try to comment later

Medical School Associated Anxiety

I am a re-applicant and have applied to medical school twice without acceptance and would like some advice on how to handle the situation. Pretty much as soon as I get close to applying or begin serious volunteering, I start freaking out and getting anxious all the time that I will not be able to handle being a doctor. I get so anxious that I sort of sabotage myself by turning in the application later and doing a worse job on it then I would have if I was calm. I also start desperately looking into other careers every time I get close to applying to med school, with the fear that I’m not really destined to be a doctor.

I worry especially about my ability to cope and deal with competitive students or stress. I also work at a hospital and hate my job, but for reasons due to my boss’s incompetence and violation of labor laws. I worry that because of my anxiety and passive nature about asking for better working conditions in the hospital I will become so miserable in medical school and residency that the happiness I would get from practicing medicine would be pointless.

I am now considering going into veterinary medicine as an alternative because I am, to be honest, less afraid of veterinary students, but would still like to practice medicine in some way.

I am a dedicated and caring student who would really like to move on with his life. I know am intelligent and have the potential to make an capable doctor, but I need some advice as to how much anxiety one should experience before deciding that medicine is not the right career.

I would like to note that I am not implying that I want any sort of medical advice about anxiety. I know this is not an appropriate place to ask that question. Also, not getting into medical school is hardly enough dysfunction to qualify for GAD using the DSM IV.

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[Doodledog]

Hi, Tildy.

I'd be very interested to hear your comments, will you post them?

My apologies for missing this originally and then the request to comment over a period of time. If something makes it to the second page of CC, I can miss it easily.

I'm not an expert in anxiety and would not want to say anything related to anxiety disorders per se. I can say, specific to medicine, that familiarity brings anxiety levels way down in terms of patient interactions and most aspects of medical training. There are few more scary things than being about to start medical school, clinical rotations, or, the ultimate event - starting internship. Yet, inevitably about 17,000 students/year make the transition and as faculty we see the anxiety levels drop rapidly. Sometimes to be replaced by fatigue and depression...but that's a different issue.

In patient interactions, things that involve procedures on patients are very anxiety provoking until, well, the second or third time you SUCCESSFULLY do the procedure. Then, you can smile at the newbies who are nervous about doing their first.

So, again, without making comments specific to anxiety disorders, I know that medical students do cope with high anxiety, yet learn to perform well. Assuming your condition is properly otherwise managed by competent caregivers, I would not consider this a reason to avoid medicine.