Is Medicine the Right Career for Me?

Read Time: 4 minutes

Whether you’ve been watching The Pitt, asking your biology teacher a long list of questions, or daydreaming about what it’s actually like to work in a hospital, medicine has probably caught your attention for a reason. It could be the science, the problem-solving, working closely with people, or some combination you haven’t quite figured out yet.

Being interested in medicine and knowing it’s the right career for you aren’t the same thing, and high school is much too early to expect yourself to have a definitive answer. A better place to start is figuring out what interests you about medicine, what the work actually requires, and whether getting closer to it makes you want to learn more.

Medicine Asks More of You Than Just Science

There’s no getting around the academic side of medicine. Physicians need a strong scientific foundation, and becoming one involves years of challenging coursework and training. If you enjoy learning how the body works, solving complicated problems, or following a question until you understand what’s happening, that’s a good reason to keep exploring.

Science is only part of what the work requires. The Association of American Medical Colleges include scientific inquiry and critical thinking alongside qualities such as empathy and compassion, communication, reliability, resilience and adaptability, teamwork, and a commitment to learning and growth. The AAMC also makes it clear that medical schools consider more than grades and scores when evaluating applicants.

So think beyond your report card for a minute. What happens when a class gets difficult? Do you lose interest once you have to work at something, or does figuring it out become satisfying? Are you comfortable asking for help, learning from a mistake, listening carefully to someone else, or changing your approach when new information complicates the answer? None of those questions can predict your future, but they can tell you something about how you respond to the kinds of challenges medicine brings.

Notice What You Find Interesting About Medicine

You may already have clues about what draws you toward the field. Maybe you like tracing symptoms back to their possible causes or understanding why a treatment works. Maybe the science interests you, but so does the idea of sitting across from another person, figuring out what they need, and helping them understand what happens next.

It’s just as useful to notice where your interest starts to fade. Medicine involves uncertainty, years of learning, teamwork, emotionally difficult situations, and a lot of interaction with people. You can love biology and discover that another scientific career suits you better. Or you might find that medicine becomes much more interesting once it leaves the classroom and involves actual people and decisions.

Pay attention to those reactions. What makes you want to know more? What parts of medicine are you less excited about? The more honestly you answer those questions, the better sense you’ll get of whether medicine is something you want to experience for yourself.

Get Close Enough to Find Out

Eventually, there’s only so much you can learn by thinking about medicine. You need something real to react to.

That could mean talking with a health professional about what an ordinary day actually involves, looking for a shadowing or volunteer opportunity, or finding another way to experience the field beyond the classroom. The AAMC’s resources on getting experience in the medical field also point students toward experiences such as physician shadowing, health care volunteering, and research as ways to learn more about medical careers.

If you’re looking for a medical summer camp, pay attention to what you’ll actually get to do while you’re there. Look for opportunities to practice skills, work through realistic scenarios, ask questions of people in the field, and experience some of the problem-solving and collaboration that medicine requires. Programs like NSLC’s Medicine & Health Care include hands-on clinical simulations and other activities designed to give high school students that kind of exposure.

Whatever route you take, the important part is having something real to react to. You may discover that you’re fascinated by patient care, that you love the science but prefer another application for it, or simply that you have a lot more questions than you did before. All of that tells you more than trying to imagine your future from a classroom.

What If You Explore Medicine and Change Your Mind?

Medicine requires a long educational commitment, so discovering early that another direction fits you better isn’t a failed experiment. Maybe you realize you love health and science but would rather pursue research, public health, nursing, biomedical engineering, or another field. Or maybe your first real exposure to medicine confirms that the parts you found interesting from a distance become even more compelling up close.

Either way, you know something you didn’t know before. High school doesn’t have to be the point when you decide whether you’ll become a doctor. It can be the time when you stop asking yourself to predict the answer and start giving yourself enough experience to discover whether medicine deserves another step.

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Curious about getting hands-on experience in medicine before college? Explore all of NSLC’s summer medical programs for high school students.