The Secret to Surviving Hard, the Miserable Medical School
Healthful Vitality | 07/31/2021 | The Secret to Surviving Hard, the Miserable Medical School
The secret to surviving hard, the miserable medical school, is understandable. No doubt, it requires ruthless consistency in thought, preparation, and performance. While the global medical school dropout rate has reduced to 11.1%, unfortunately, it is 42-63% in South America and developing countries. Once accepted and enrolled, there is a 5% chance of dropout in the U.S., indicating 95% chances of graduation.
However, as medical school is hard, the dropout has high-priced consequences. Think of the hard work behind getting accepted, enrolled, and accumulated a mountain of student debt. Research shows the 2021 average medical school debt is $215,900. The good news is that you have set your overall goal of becoming a physician. Now, drive your current behavior towards you in graduating on time with a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.), Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (D.O.), or Doctor of Podiatric Medicine (D.P.M.).
Surviving hard, the miserable medical school: Causes of academic failure of medical students
Studies show that the causes of academic failure of medical students are of several reasons, including:
- Gender
- Living in a dorm
- Employment
- Marital status
- Age
- Special rights in the entrance exams
- The time lag between getting the diploma and starting the medical school.
Besides, the following factors cause medical school students to dropout:
- Incapacity for the intellectual call
- Overconfident and unprepared
- Illness, stress, and family issues
- Wrong career choice
- Behavioral issues and lack of discipline
Tips for surviving hard, the miserable medical school
In general, many people set achievable goals but fail to act toward achieving the set goals. While being goal-oriented, you need to be goal-directed every day in your activities as part of your advancement towards becoming a physician. So think, plan, and act every day to make sure you achieve results daily towards the overall goal of successfully finishing medical school on time.
The tips to think, plan, and act every day include the following:
- Stay focused on your purpose
- Focus on the whole, not on parts (concentrate on the final outcome of success, so act daily)
- Organize better
- Attend all the orientation and training programs
- Learn about the job description, qualifications, industry expectations, and challenges physicians face in their careers, and use them as industry expectation.
- Be proactive in an incredibly significant way– Seek new experience and knowledge beyond the medical school curriculum, thinking that your contributions matter in compellingly helping others.
- Execute your plan with a difference, use tactics wherever required to win your strategy. Know that most plans fails because they execute poorly.
- Stop overthinking (destructive thinking could damage your health). For example, destructive stress makes one have High Blood Pressure, Heart Disease, Obesity, and Diabetes.
- Improve your ability to adapt
- Hard work and take it as an opportunity to challenge yourself
- Eat healthy to keep your energy strong throughout the day (sleep, diet, exercise, sunlight, music, and positive self-talk).
- Avoid ego, reach out for help and build a helpful relationship
- Identify and utilize every resource to achieve success (research with intelligence to find helpful resources)
- Continuously learn and improve essential personal development skills ( e.g., showing initiative, self-confidence, problem-solving, communication, adaptability)
- Use time management routines. Map out daily, weekly, and monthly priorities and work hard to achieve them. Time could be a threat, so use it in your favor.
- Learn and use crisis management tools to manage current crisis, if any, and use them to become an extraordinary future leader to navigate organizations during turbulent times.
- Embrace difficulty as a happiness tip
- Avoid fear which only takes you down
- Use social support network
- Find a true mentor who went through a similar situation and is willing to mentor you sincerely and mind to help or transfer relevant knowledge.
Conclusion
Indeed, taking care of patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors, nurses, and medical professionals along with other critical workers, once again proved as true heroes of the world. Therefore, surviving hard, the miserable medical school is significant than ever. As an outstanding team member of the health care team, to navigate people through extraordinary times like the COVID-19 humanitarian crisis and many more yet to come, medical school is the stage for preparing future physicians.